its vast amount of informotion, for its great usefulness as the acknowledged standard of our language, it demands at the hands of the constituted authorities a permanent place in all our districts.

SLATES FOR PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

Possibly some teachers yet live who think there is no need of slates for young children, but if such there are we do not know where to find them. Would that as much could be said of parents. But it is not too much to affirm that many a father thinks the money spent for a slate for his child before he begins to "cipher," a total loss.

In our best schools it will be found that spelling is extensively taught by writing, and in the best Primary schools, much time is spent by the little folks, in writing or printing both spelling and reading lessons on the slate. All Educators agree that this is of great benefit; that it is one of the best methods—not the only method to be sure—but one never to be neglected. And yet during the winter of 1854-5 bitter complaints have been made because pupils were required to print or write a few words of their spelling lessons; objections have been made to map-drawing, or drawing anything-in school hours, because it was not essential. It is not meant that parents objected to an unreasonable time spent in such exercises, but any time was too much in their estimation. And worse than all, these objections have been made by Connecticut people.

The Slate was highly valued and constantly used by Pestalozzi, the man who arrived nearest of all to the true philosophy of primary education. By it he taught the alphabet, and his pupils forgot their play, and mischief, while they tried to make as good letters on their little slates as the teacher had drawn on the blackboard. Spelling and the Alphabet, were taught together; and Drawing, Reading, and Grammar kept the slate in use. Indeed it was the scholar's first aid, and continued with him through his school days. Some of the advantages of its

use are:

1. Assisting memory by requiring close attention to the form of let

ters.

2. Giving freedom and ease of motion to the hand,

3. Furnishing pleasant occupation.

4. Allowing errors to be corrected.

5. Cultivating taste, and originality,

6. "Enough, enough," say you, and so say we, only we wish to show you the very prettiest slate for Primary Schools we ever saw.

On one side the pupil is shown how to hold the pencil or the pen, and is provided with copies of figures, written Alphabet, both small and Capital letters and lines are ruled upon the slate to guide him. On the other, are paralled lines, angles, the square, circle, and various other geometrical figures, also a variety of drawing copies suited to the taste and capacity of young children; and on the corners-teachers will appreciate this are cushions by which noise is prevented, from which it is often called the NOISELESS slate.

Doubtless the Holbrook School Apparatus Manufacturing Co., will be glad to furnish every school with these slates. Write them at Hartford and see. F. C. B.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND TASTEFUL IN EDUCATION.

Why should not the interior of our school houses aim at somewhat of the taste and elegance of a parlor?

Might not the vase of flowers enrich the table, the walls display not only well-executed maps, but historical pictures or engravings; and moralist or sage, orator or father of his country! Is it alleged that the expenses thus incurred, would be thrown away, and the beautiful objects defaced? This is not a necessary result.

I have been informed by teachers who had made the greatest advances towards appropriate and elegant accommodations for their pupils,

that it was not so. They have said it was easier to enforce habits of neatness and order among objects whose taste and value made them worthy of care, than amid the parsimony of apparatus, whose pitiful meanness operates as a temptation to waste and destroy.

Let the communities, now so anxious to raise the standard of educa tion, venture the experiment of a more liberal adornment of their dwellings.

Let them put more faith in that respect for the beautiful which really exists in the young heart, and requires only to be called forth and nur tured, to become an ally of virtue, and a handmaid to religion.

Knowledge has a more imposing effect on the young mind, when it stands like the Apostle at the beautiful gate of the Temple. Memory looks back to it more joyously, from the distant or desolated tracks of life, for the bright scenery of its early path.

I hope the time is coming, when every isolated village school-house, shall be as an Attic temple, on whose exterior the occupant may study the principles of symmetry and grace. Why need the structures where the young are initiated into those virtues which make life beautiful, be divorced from taste and comfort.

Do any reply that the "perception of the beautiful" is but a luxurious sensation, and may be dispensed with in systems of education which this age of utility establishes? Is not its culture the more demanded to throw a healthful leaven into the mass of society, and to serve as some counterpoise for that love of accumulation, which pervades every rank and spreads even in consecrated places the tables of the moneychangers.

In ancient times, the appreciation of whatever was beautiful in the frame of nature, was accounted salutary by sages and philosophers. Galen says, "he who has two loaves of bread, let him sell one and buy flowers; for bread is food for the body, but flowers are food for the soul."

If the "perception of the beautiful", may be made conducive to present and future happiness, if it have a tendency to refine and sublimate the character; ought it not to receive culture throughout the whole process of education ?

It takes root, most naturally and deeply, in the simple and loving heart; and is, therefore, peculiarily fitted to the early years of life, when, to borrow the words of a German writer, "every sweet sound takes a sweet odor by the hand, and walks in through the open door of the child's heart."

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY,

WHAT IS POETRY?

We will not undertake to settle this vexed question, but we present to our readers the thoughts of a few great authorities on the subject:— Metrical composition, verse.

This term is also applied to the language of excited imagination and feeling. WEBSTER.

Poetry is the language of passion, or of enlivened imagination, formed most commonly, into regular numbers.

The primary aim of the poet is to please, and to move; and, therefore, it is to the imagination, and the passions, that he speaks.

JAMIESON.

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. EMERSON.

By poetry we mean, not of course all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise.

By poetry we mean, the art of employing words, in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination: the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled.

"As imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.'

MACAULAY.

distinguish poetry Were the histo

Though versification be one of the criteria that from prose, yet it is not the sole mark of distinction. ries of Polybius and Livy simply turned into verse, they would not become poems; because they would be destitute of those figures, embellishments, and flights of imagination, which display the poet's art and invention. On the other hand, we have many productions that justly lay claim to the title of poetry, without having the advantage of versification; witness the Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, with many beautiful hymns, descriptions, and rhapsodies, to be found in different parts of the Old Testament, some of them the immediate productions of divine inspiration.

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If poetry exists independent of versification, it will naturally be asked, how then is it to be distinguished? Undoubtedly, oy its own peculiar expression it has a language of its own, speaks so feelingly to the heart, and so pleasingly to the imagination, that its meaning cannot possibly be misunderstood by any person of delicate sensations.

It is a species of painting with words, in which the figures are happily conceived, ingeniously arrayed, affectingly expressed, and recommended with all the warmth and harmony of coloring: it consists of imagery, description, metaphors, similes, and sentiments, adapted with propriety to the subject, so contrived and executed as to soothe the ear, surprise and delight the fancy, mend and melt the heart, elevate the mind, and please the understanding.

"Poets would profit or delight mankind,

And with the amusing, show the instructive join'd.”

GOLDSMITH.

CERTAIN ERRORS AND THEIR REMEDY.

It is unquestionably true that the Teacher's vocation demands a versatility of talent, together with a thoroughness of mental discipline, of which many engaged in the business of instruction seem but little aware. Some, we are led to fear, wholly ignore their momentous responsibilities; others manifest a neglect and indifference the more blameworthy, inasmuch as it is often the result of apparent perverseness, or a strong disinclination to avail themselves of the means of information within their reach. Not seldom, indeed, is it the fact that this same feeling extends to the parent, and even to an entire community, where passion and prejudice are permitted to usurp the place of reason.

It is not our present purpose to furnish proof of what must be obvious to all, nor to seek for the causes of what we have mentioned; but assuming our statement to be true, let us inquire where rests the remedial power for evils of this nature.

Not wholly as we think, is it placed in the hands of any legislative body, or organized association. Laws indeed may be enacted, and their provisions enforced so far as can be in tangible form, yet certain it is that some secret, though potent influence, which no state can bind, will often nullify their power for producing intended results. And is it attributable to imperfect legislation that the object sought is not obtained? It by no means follows.

Nor, on the other hand, can we means of a sure and radical reform.

look to the Teacher alone for the It is true that from the nature of