the schools of the Dissenters. A controversy as to the respective merits of the systems of Bell and Lancaster then sprung up, the friends and adherents of each claiming for it not only superiority in merit, but priority of invention. The idea of mutual instruction was, however, not new. Indeed, it is as old as Lycurgus; and Lancaster was too candid a man to claim an absolute originality for his plan. In his first pamphlet, published in 1803, he says: "I ought not to close my account without acknowledging the obligations I lie under to Dr. Bell; I much regret that I was not acquainted with the beauty of his system till somewhat advanced in my plan. If I had known it, it would have saved me much trouble and some retrograde movements." This controversy was as much sectarian as educational, as the rival systems were favored, the one by the Dissenters, and the other by the Church of England. It, however, served a useful purpose, in giving an impetus to the progress of education. In 1811, a society, called the National Society, was formed for the establishment of schools in connection with the Church of England, on Dr. Bell's plan; and Dr. Bell was appointed to superintend the enterprise, a duty which engrossed much of his time and efforts until his death. By this means, the Madras system obtained an introduction not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland, as well as in some parts of the United States. For the purpose of bringing it to the notice of educators on the continent, Dr. Bell made an extensive tour, in the course of which he visited the schools of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, with the former of whom he was quite charmed. He has much that is original," he remarked, "much that is excellent. If he had a course of study-if he were to dismiss his masters, and adopt the monitorial system and the principle of emulation, he would be super-excellent." In the mean time, the analogous system of Lancaster had been carried into effect in numerous schools established by an association of Dissenters, styled The British and Foreign School Society; and much active rivalry existed between the two societies. (See LANCASTER, JOSEPH.) During his life, Dr. Bell received several lucrative offices in the Church, from which he was enabled to amass a large fortune. The whole of this, amounting to £120,000, he bequeathed to various towns in his native country for the endowment of schools. He founded Madras College, at St. Andrews, and a lectureship, at Edinburgh University, on the principles of teaching, and on the monitorial system. On his death, in 1832, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the highest dignitaries of the Church and many distinguished noblemen attending as mourners. An elegant monument marks his resting-place, with an inscription in which he is characterized as the "Author of the Madras System."-See SOUTHEY, Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell, D. D. (Lond., 1844); the Edinburgh Review, vol. XXXIII.; LEITCH, Practical Educationists and their Systems of Teaching (Glasgow, 1876).

BELLES-LETTRES is a French expression for polite literature, i. e., books and language in so far as they are shaped by the idea of beauty. It has been used in English to designate a somewhat vague class of studies connected, more or less nearly, with the mastery of literature on its esthetic side. Some of the colleges in the United States have had a professor of belleslettres. He has taught rhetoric and elocution mainly; but poetry, drama, prose fiction, criticism, classical philology, the humanities in general, are all in his province. Blair's Rhetoric was long widely used as a text-book in this branch ; and several editions of it are still kept in print.

Esthetics (the science of beauty) and philology have, of late years, made great advance, and new text-books are needed to set forth modern methods of studying literature and language, so as to understand their beauties. The elements of the study should be taught early. In the kindergarten or other infant school, the children should be taught to admire and examine beautiful objects, to notice the qualities which give them beauty, to name the objects and the qualities; they should be told anecdotes in which beautiful persons do beautiful acts, and the words expressive of beauty should be spoken with tones and gestures which may give them lively associations and a permanent place in the memory; passages of verse or rhythmical prose in which beautiful thoughts are fittingly expressed, and of which the teacher is fond, should be repeated till they are caught by the pupils. Such passages may be among the noblest of our literature. It is not necessary that they should be wholly comprehended by the learners. They may be regarded as music, producing comparatively vague intellectual processes, but quickening powerfully the emotional element of esthetic culture. Language and literature should lead the youth of cultured races to a more rapid development than the natural growth of the understanding. Beautiful and noble words thus learned by heart will serve as molds in which the expanding intellect may flow and form. This carly oral instruction may be happily aided by learning to read in illustrated books, in which beautiful pictures are made to interpret and enforce the thought. Some of the magazines for children afford such aid in a good form; such as The Nursery (Boston); St. Nicholas (N.Y.). Children_taught in this way will be ready to pursue the study of belles-lettres when they have learned to read with ease. The simplest method used in our schools is the reading in class of selections of characteristic works of the most admired authors in our own and other classic languages. Text-books of selections for this purpose are: HUDSON's Text-book of Poetry; HUDSON'S Text-book of Prose (Boston); UNDERwood's British Authors; UNDERWOOD's American Authors (Boston); Typical Selections from the best English Authors from the 16th to the 19th Century (Clarendon Press, Oxford); most series of School Readers have a class book of literature, and some of them are well selected

nations. This will require the reading of many.. more books than can usually be read in school. The teacher should, however, see that many are read. This can best be done by requiring written exercises of such a kind as to assure him of the fact without taking much of his time. He may have brief outlines of stories handed in, as, of some of the Canterbury Tales; or the gist of the critical views of some author on a particular point, as Coleridge's in regard to Hamlet; or the brief mention of ten of the most interesting passages in a book; as, in the Pilgrim's Progress, (1) The Slough of Despond, (2) The Interpreter's House, (3) The Fight with Apollyon, and so on. Or he may ask for biographical facts on which works of art are based; as, what events in Milton's life suggested passages in Paradise Lost. Writing should also be freely used to stimulate original production; imitative production is, to be sure, what is to be expected of the young students of belles-lettres; but they should use their pens freely, in such a way as the authors they admire or their own powers may prompt. If they show signs of talent, the teacher should encourage them. The meters of the poets may easily be imitated; and it is only by practice in production that the secrets of style are attained or thoroughly understood. The student of belles-lettres will soon learn that the English is only one among many classic literatures. He will wish to become acquainted with Homer, Virgil, and Dante as well as with Milton; with Boccacio as well as Chaucer; Goethe as well as Shakespeare. He will wish to learn Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German. (See the articles on these and other languages.) No literature can be mastered without mastering the language in which it was originally written; but much may be done by translations. Several text-books of such selected translations are available: LONGFELLOW's Poets and Poetry of Europe (Phila.); ELTON'S Specimens of Greek and Roman Poets (Phila.); WRIGHT'S The Golden Treasury of ancient Greek Poetry (Oxford); RAMAGE's Beautiful Thoughts from Greek Authors; same from Latin Authors; from German and Spanish; from French and Italian (London); ANGEL'S French Literature (Phila.) ; BERARD'S Spanish Art and Literature (Phila.); BOTTA's Universal Literature (Boston); and The Hebrew Poetry in the English Bible. But in' order to render this historical study as valuable as possible, it should be accompanied with the critical study of literary works relating to the principles of art, or the laws of beauty. Such study requires a knowledge of descriptive rhetoric and prosody, and of the technical terms of esthetic criticism; so that the students may be able to classify and name the facts which come before them, and talk of them with perspicuity. They should, for example, when set to study a beautiful passage, recognize the rhetorical forms which occur in it, such as similes, metaphors, personification, etc; if it is poetry, they should recognize the poetical forms, such as the meter, with its management of the feet and cæsuras, of rhyme and alliteration; they should be able to

and arranged. The kind of beauty earliest appre- | ciated is that of adventure. Short stories please; such as fables and parables. The style must be simple, the movement rapid. Lyrics or orations expressing tender or noble feelings come next. The appreciation of epic and romantic narrative will grow rapidly; minute delineation of character, the drama, and the modern novel will then follow, and finally descriptions of works of art, scenery, and nature. The liking for ornate language, figures of speech, rhythmical effects, and other arts of style, generally needs special cultivation to make it strong in young readers. Whatever be the passages chosen to read, the teacher aiming to give instruction in belleslettres will direct the attention of the class to beautiful thoughts, figures, and expressions, and will have them read with care and expression, so as to bring out the thought and feeling of each passage. He may also mention criticisms which have been made on the passage, tell of occasions on which it has been quoted or imitated, quote similar passages in other authors or the same author, and have parts committed to memory. In such studies, more is caught than taught. The teacher must feel the beauties and communicate the feeling by looks and tones. Pupils who read with expression should also be used to heighten the interest of the exercise. A single good reader will often stimulate a whole class. Comment and criticism should be mainly used for pointing out beauties, and exciting admiration for them. Appreciative reading, comment, and memorizing may thus be made a delightful introduction to literature, leading naturally to further study in two main directions,the historical and the philosophical. The historical is the easier in its beginnings. Courses of lectures on the history of literature, and text-books giving material for historical and biographical study in connection with selections for reading, are to be had. CLEVELAND'S Compendium of English Literature (N. Y.) includes the most eminent authors from Sir John Mandeville to Cowper. The same author has published similar works on the Literature of the 19th Century, and on American Literature (N. Y.). Somewhat like them are SHAW's History and Specimens of English Literature (edition by BACKUS, N. Y.); and CHAMBERS's Manual of English Literature. Larger works for the teacher and for reference are CHAMBERS's Cyclopædia of English Literature (N. Y.); and DuYCKINCK'S Cyclopædia of American Literature (Phila.); and indispensable to the thorough teacher is ALLIBONE'S Dictionary of Authors (Phila.), which is a great store-house of biography, bibliography, and criticism gleaned from many sources, and quoted at length. With these aids, the student of belles-lettres must be led to point out how each successive beauty in the passages which are read is related to the character, education, and times of the author; and by well-directed study he may acquire, in time, clear ideas of the representative works of literary art in the great eras of history,-first of English history, then of the history of other

Among the most famous schools of the Benedictines, were Monte Casino, Bobbio, Rome, and Milan, in Italy; Tours, Corbie, Fleury, which at one time had 5,000 students, Clermont, Ferrières, Fontenay, Reims, Aniane, Marmoutier, Lobbes, in France and Belgium; St. Gall, Reichenau, Fulda, Fritzlar, Hersfeld, Mayence, Treves, Prüm, Lorsch, Weissenburg, Ratisbon, Salzburg, Korvei, in Germany and Switzerland. In England, St. Peter's Convent at Canterbury had a wide-spread reputation, through Theodore of Tarsus and his companion Hadrian. The double convent of Wearmouth and Yarrow, which was founded in 673 by Benedict Biscop, gave to western teachers the learned and illustrious Bede. (See BEDE.) York, which owed its celebrity to Egbert and Adelbert, counted among its pupils the celebrated Alcuin. (See ALCUIN.) Though the prominent influence which the Benedictines, at the beginning of the middle age, exercised upon the education of Catholic Europe, was never recovered, they still continue to conduct a number of educational institutions. present (1876), they have a number of colleges and gymnasia in the United States, in Austria, Switzerland, and several other countries.

At

BENEKE, Friedrich Eduard, an ingenious German writer on the art of education, was born at Berlin, Febr. 17., 1798. He studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Halle and Berlin, and finally decided to devote himself wholly to philosophy in order to reform it. He became a lecturer (privatdocent) on philosophy at the university of Berlin in 1820, and, placing himself wholly upon the stand-point of empiricism and denying the possibility of a priori cognitions, at once boldly attacked the system of Hegel who at that time was all-powerful. The Prussian government, in 1822, deprived him of the right of lecturing at the university, because as the minister of public worship, Altenstein, personally explained to him, a philosophy which did not derive everything from the absolute, could not be recognized as a philosophy at all. Beneke removed, in 1824, to the university of Göttingen, whence he returned, in 1827, to Berlin, where he was appointed after the death of Hegel, in 1832, extraordinary professor of philosophy. He suddenly disappeared, March 1., 1854, and a year later his corpse was found in the canal at Charlottenburg. It has never been ascertained whether he committed suicide, or whether his death was caused by an accident. Most of the numerous works of Beneke are of a philosophical character; as an educational writer, he became first known, in 1835, by a work, entitled Theory of Education and Instruction (Erziehungs- und Unterrichtslehre), which made a profound impression among teachers and friends of education. The system of education proposed by him is based exclusively on psychology, and he claims for it the character of a wholly empirical science. He found many enthusiastic admirers, one of whom, Dressler (in Hergang's Realencyclopädie, 1, p. 264), says of him: All former achievements in the province of pedagogy

were surpassed by Beneke. Through him the education of man has gained a character which was formerly unknown certainty of success. Previous successes were accidental, but the psychology of Beneke has given us a power over nature which does not fall behind the power exercised by physicists and chemists. The number of adherents of this system is small, though the genius of Beneke is universally acknowledged. Among the other educational works of Beneke, one published in 1836, and entitled Our Universities and what they need, attracted great attention.

BENEVOLENCE, good-will, general and habitual kindness of disposition in our feelings, not only toward each other, but toward the lower animals, is a trait of character which should receive a careful cultivation in the education of the young. Children, in general, are not naturally benevolent. Their undeveloped sympathies, their active propensities and love of sport, and their proneness to what is called by phrenologists "destructiveness", incline them to acts of selfishness and cruelty. In order to check this tendency. their sensibilities should, as much as possible, be aroused; they should not be subjected to harsh or inconsiderate treatment, and they should not only read and hear stories that awaken their sympathies, but should be made to observe objects of compassion that require their active aid; and they should be incited and encouraged in every possible way to self-sacrifice in relieving the sufferings of others. In their conduct toward each other, they should be habituated to lay aside their resentments, to forgive injuries, to put the kindest and most considerate construction upon the acts of their companions, and to dismiss from their minds all suspicions and jealousies, as well as all distrust that is not based upon indisputable facts. The quarrels of children may for this purpose become the means of wholesome discipline in instruction; since the disputants themselves may be made to feel the desirability of mutual forbearance, and their associates, by being brought in to aid in reconciling them, may be impressed with the beautiful character of the peace-maker. In the treatment of the lower animals by children, there is much occasion for this kind of training; and the skillful teacher will not fail to make use of the numerous incidents of school life to impress this virtue upon the child's character. (See MORAL EDUCATION.)

BENGEL, Johann Albrecht, a celebrated German theologian and educator in Würtemberg, was born in 1687, and died in 1752. He is chiefly famous as a theological writer, being well known as one of the most prominent representatives of German pietism. He was, from 1713 to 1741, a very successful teacher at a theological seminary at Denkendorf, and while there introduced many educational reforms. The course of studies which he drew up for his school, in concert with his colleagues, attracted great attention. From an educational point of view, his writings are valuable as illustrating the peculiar position which pietism occupies in the history of German