mythology;-wit, poetry, eloquence, whose shafts, to the vision of educated minds, are quick and refulgent as lightning, but giving out to the ignorant, only an empty rumbling of words;— everything, in fine, may be found in their pages, which can make them, at once, worthy the highest admiration of the learned, and wholly unintelligible to children. If I may recur to the illustration of the Balearic islanders, given above; the prize of the young slingers and archers is invaluable, if it can be obtained, but it is placed so high as to be wholly invisible. Children can advance from the proposition, that one and one make two, up to the measurement of planetary distances, but an immense number of steps must be taken in traversing the intermediate spaces. And it is only by a similar gradation and progressiveness, that a child can advance from understanding such nursery talk, as "the ball rolls," "the dog barks," "the horse trots," until his mind acquires such compass and velocity of movement, that when he reads the brief declaration of the Psalmist, "Oh, Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all!" his swift conception will sweep over all known parts of the universe in an instant, and return glowing with adoration of their Creator.

Using incomprehensible reading books draws after it the inev itable consequence of bad reading. Except the mental part is well done, it is impossible to read with any rhetorical grace or propriety. Could any one, ignorant of the Latin and French languages, expect to read a Latin or French author with just modulations and expressiveness of voice, at the first or at the ten thousandth trial? And it matters not what language we read, provided the mechanical process is animated by no vitality of thought. Something, doubtless, depends upon flexibility and pliancy of physical organs; but should they be ever so perfect, a fitting style of delivery is born of intelligence and feeling only, and can have no other parentage. Without these, there will be no perception of impropriety, though epitaphs and epigrams are read in the same manner. If the pieces of which the reading books consist, are among the most difficult in the English language, is it not absurd to expect, that the least instructed portion of the people, speaking English-the very children-should be able to display their meaning with grace and fulness? To encourage children to strive after a supposed natural way of expressing emotions and sentiments they do not feel, encourages deception, not sincerity; a discord, not a harmony between the movements of mind and tongue. No rules, in regard to reading, can supply a defect in understanding what is read. Rhetorical directions, though they should equal the variety of musical notation, would not suffice to indicate the slower or swifter

enunciation of emphatic or unemphatic words, or those modulations of the human voice, which are said to amount to hundreds of thousands in number. Inflections and the rate of utterance, are too volatile and changeful to be guided by rules; though perceptible, they are indescribable. All good reading of dramatic or poetic works springs from emotion Nothing but the greatest histrionic power, can express an emotion without feeling it. But, once let the subject matter of the reading lesson be understood, and, almost universally, nature will supply the proper variations of voice. A child makes no mistake in talking, for the simple reason, that he never undertakes to say what he does not understand. Nature is the only master of rhetoric on the play-ground. Yet there, earnestness gives a quick and emphatic utterance; the voice is roughened by combative feelings; it is softened by all joyous and grateful emotions, and it is projected, as by the accuracy of an engineer, to strike the ear of a distant play-fellow. Nay, so perfect are undrilled children in this matter, that if any one of a group of twenty makes a false cadence or emphasis, or utters interrogatively what he meant to affirm, a simultaneous shout proclaims an observance of the blunder; yet, if the same group were immediately put to reading from some of our school books, their many-sounding voices would shrink from their wide compass, into a one-toned instrument; or what is far worse, if they affected an expression of sentiment, they would cast it so promiscuously over the sentences as to make good taste shudder. Occasionally, in some of the reading books, there are lessons which the scholars fully understand; and I presume it is within the observation of every person, conversant with schools, that the classes learn more from those lessons, than from the residue of the book. The moment such lessons are reached, the dull machinery quickens into life; the moment they are passed, it becomes droning machinery again. Even the mechanical part of reading, therefore, is dependent for all its force, gracefulness and variety upon the mental.

There are other features of our reading books, too important to be unnoticed, even in a brief discussion of their merits. Two prominent characteristics are, the incompleteness of the subjects of the reading lessons, considered each by itself; and the discordance between them, when viewed in succession. Lord Kaimes maintains, in substance, that there is an original, instinctive propensity or faculty of the mind, which demands the coinpletion or finishing of what has been begun, and is displeased by an untimely or abrupt termination. Other metaphysicians attest the same doctrine. Whether such mental tendency be native or superinduced, its practical value can hardly be over

estimated; and whatever conduces to establish or confirm it, -should be sedulously fostered. In our state of civilization, all questions have become complex. Hence, an earnest desire to learn all the facts, to consider all the principles, which rightfully go to modify conclusions, is a copious and unfailing source of practical wisdom. Error often comes, not from any mistake in our judgments, upon the premises given; but from omitting views, as much belonging to the subject, as those which are considered. We often see men, who will develop one part of a case with signal ability, and yet are always in the wrong, because they overlook other parts, equally essential to a sound result. Thus error becomes the consequence of seeing only parts of truth. Often, the want of the hundredth part to make a whole, renders the possession of the other ninetynine valueless. If one planet were left out of our astronomical computations, the motions of the solar system could not be explained, though all about the others were perfectly known. Children, therefore, should not only be taught, but habituated, as far as possible, to compass the subject of inquiry, to explore its less obvious parts, and, if I may so speak, to circumnavigate it; so that their minds will be impatient of a want of completeness and thoroughness, and will resent one-sided views and half-representations. Merely a habit of mind in a child of seeking for well connected, wellproportioned views, would give the surest augury of a great man. Now, if there be such a tendency in the human mind, urging it to search out the totality of any subject, and rewarding success, not only with utility, but with a lively pleasure, is not the reading pupil defrauded both of the benefit and the enjoyment, by having his mind forcibly transferred, in rapid succession, from a few glimpses of one subject to as few glimpses of another? On looking into a majority of the reading books in our schools, I believe it will be found, that they contain more separate pieces than leaves. Often, these pieces are antipodal to each other in style, treatment and subject. There is a solemn inculcation of the doctrine of universal peace on one page, and a martial, slaughter-breathing poem on the next. I have a reading book, in which a catalogue of the names of all the books of the Old and New Testaments is followed immediately, and on the same page, by a receipt to make good red ink." But what is worst of all is, that the lessons, generally, have not, in any logical sense, either a beginning or an end. They are splendid passages, carved out of an eloquent oration or sermon, without premises or conclusion ;-a page of compressed thought, taken from a didactic poem, without the slightest indication of the system of doctrines embodied in the whole;-extracts from forensic arguments, without any statement of the facts of the case, so that

the imagination of the young reader is inflamed, while those faculties which determine the fitness and relevancy of the advocate's appeals are wholly unexercised;-forty or fifty lines of the tenderest pathos, unaccompanied by any circumstances, tending to awaken sympathy, and leaving the children to guess both at cause and consolation ;—and while no dramatist dares violate an absurd rule, that every tragedy written for the stage, shall have five acts, a single isolated scene, taken from the middle of one of them, seems to be considered a fair proportion for a child. Probably in a school of an average number of scholars, three or four of these pieces would be read at each exercise, so that, even if the pieces were intelligible by themselves, the contradictory impressions will effectually neutralize each other. Surely, if, according to Lord Kaimes, there be an innate desire or propensity to finish, we should expect that the children would manifest it, in such cases, by desiring to have done with the book forever.

ART. II.-SCHOOL OF PLATO AT ATHENS.

[Translated from the German of Tenneman, by Prof. Edwards of Andover.] WHEN Plato had completed his travels and had reached the end of their various dangers and calamities, he returned to Athens and began publicly to teach philosophy in the academy. He had here a garden from his paternal inheritance, which was purchased for five hundred drachmae.* If now the story about Anniceris be true, Plato must have had two gardens in this place, which also a passage from Diogenes allows us to conjecture. This writer remarks that Plato taught philosophy first in the academy, but afterwards in a garden at Colonus. His academy very soon became celebrated and was quite numerously attended by high-born and able young men, for he had before, by means of his travels, and probably by some publications, acquired a distinguished name. He might indeed have taught some persons in philosophy before he founded his academy, for he

Apul. 367. Plut. de Exilio, 603, says it was bought for 3000 drachmae. But I conjecture that the transcriber read y, instead of 7. [The drachma is reckoned at 8 cents.]

↑ Diog. III. 5.

says in a letter to Dionysius, which might have been written about the one hundred and fourth Olympiad, that some persons for thirty years had reflected on his philosophy.* As Plato came to Syracuse about the ninetyeighth Olympiad, he could not have commenced teaching in the academy till about the ninetyninth Olympiad. The names of his most celebrated disciples are known, so that I need not stop to mention them. The regulation of his school and his mode of teaching were regarded by ancient writers as circumstances so unimportant, that they passed them by almost in silence. By a diligent investigation, I have been able to bring together nothing more than some disconnected accounts, which I here communicate in the hope that intelligent men may employ their talents in uniting these detached fragments into one whole.

Plato in teaching pursued a method altogether different from Socrates, inasmuch as his philosophy, in its contents, extent, form and object was very far removed from the Socratic. Socrates wished to quicken and develop the moral feeling. This object he could accomplish in no better manner than by his own ability to exert a direct influence on the hearts of his disciples by means of conversations. Plato, on the contrary, rather labored to give his philosophy a systematic form, since he considered it proved that all knowledge and action must rest on certain grounds which philosohpy only could establish. The doctrines of Socrates were of common practical utility, and designed for universal application; to them was fitted a popular delivery. Plato's philosophy, for the most part, was not intended for the public, inasmuch as it contained the scientific grounds of theoretical and practical philosophy, whose results Socrates communicated in the way of conversation. Hence Socrates was a

teacher of the people; while Plato founded a school for those who would educate themselves as philosophers. Consequently he could not, as his teacher had done, go round to the public resorts, but he taught in a fixed place.† Ought he not, however, at least to have made the attempt to bring publicly before the great mass of the people some results of his philosophizing, which he regarded as truths generally necessary and fitted to the dignity of man? I find in The