to foster more than ever the feeling, that the child is a thing of profit. Necessity, however, has no law, and if a necessity has arisen, the truest wisdom will be to apply the system of inducement in such a way, as to entail the smallest amount of evil upon the moral nature of parent and child.

The custom of some Schools, which take advantage of the capitation grant, has been to divide at least half the grant among such of the children as have attended the stipulated number of days. It perhaps might demoralize the parents less, were the advantages offered in the shape of addition to the premiums of a clothing club, or retained with the accessions of each year, until the boy left School for work, or the girl for service. We call attention to the Iron and Coal Master's Association,* for awarding annual prizes among the Schools of the Mining districts of South Wales. It is proposed to award both a money-prize and a certificate of merit. The value of the certificate should be placed, if possible, in the estimate of parents and child, higher than the pecuniary payment. The latter is a bribe, the former may be held by the parent in memory of his discharge of duty to his child, the benefit of which shall never cease through life. To effect this important end, capitalists and employers of labour in any given districts, as for instance, among the Iron and Coal Masters of South Wales, should engage to give preference, cæteris paribus, especially when they have to fill up vacant situations of advantage, to those artisans and labourers, who hold the certificate of School attendance. Some hundreds of manufacturers, merchants, and the employers of labour have signed a declaration, that the certificates awarded after examination by the Society of Arts are worthy of credit, but sub. ordinate efforts of a local character, in large towns and industrial istricts would produce, in our opinion, still more telling effects upon the progress of popular education. This is a question of vital moment, which we submit to all friends of the working classes, managers of schools, and christian philanthropists, as well as H.M. Inspectors of Schools.

*To be published in our next number

As the tests which are applied to work vary, so will the work vary. It is this which attaches to the preparation of Examination Paper so much importance and responsibility. They give at once an impulse and direction to work, and not only set in motion, but, to a great extent, guide the educational machinery of the country. It is, therefore, with the greatest interest that we watch from year to year the tendency of our examinations and endeavour to discover what reading is rewarded, and what by implication, discountenanced, and generally what is the breadth and depth of attainment, which those who control our educational system account normal for the schoolmaster. Comparing the papers of 1856 with those of preceding years, we venture to say that a new test, (new, at least in its thoroughness) is now applied to our work, which if it does not revolutionize our teaching, will, if fairly carried out, compel us at every step to regard much more than formerly its practical aspect. In the application of this test, there may be many difficulties, and possibly some danger, but it seems to us a step in the right direction,> calculated to make our training more valuable, inasmuch as it sets a premium not simply upon positive knowledge, but upon the power to use and adapt it to the end in view. Now the truth seems to be that it is an easy thing to make examinations test acquirement, but a very difficult thing to test by their means power of mind. Some, admitting the difficulty, still maintain that power of mind is indirectly tested in testing for positive attainment. The entire system of Cambridge examination may be said to be founded on this view. To a certain extent it is undoubtedly a true one, for we may well argue that power of mind is necessary in order to master any great subject thoroughly, and that, therefore, if we can ascertain that the subject has been mastered, we are entitled to assume the possession by the examinee of that amount of industry, memory, imagination, versatility, and concentration of thought, which we are aware must have been employed. There is, moreover, no doubt but that success attends this system in its practical working. The most successful men at the University are found by ample proof to be the best trained for those duties in life where power of mind is essential nor do we think it fair to urge against this deduction that the cleverest men succeeded at the University, just as they would have succeeded in any pursuit against duller competitors. It would still be unwise immediately to conclude that a system proved sound under

certain circumstances should at once be adopted under all. If the nature of the case seems to allow of direct tests being applied to practical ability, or can show any special reason for their adoption, the ground is changed, and we should try the cause again. It seems to us, that such special circumstances can be shown to exist in the work of our Training Colleges. It has often been raised as a complaint against our system that much is taught which has no practical value. Every one engaged in education knows well that this cry is often unreasonable enough, that it is founded upon a false and narrow estimate of what practical value means, and that the true answer to it is, that maturer intellects cannot be nourished on the intellectual food of children, and that the higher subjects comprehend the lower, and are a vantage ground from which we gain greater breadth of vision. No one can for a moment deny that a knowledge of Algebra, for instance, simplifies the teaching of Arithmetic, or that the critical study of an English author places us in a position to communicate more soundly even the most elementary ideas of Grammar. It would be easy, we think, in this manner to justify most amply if it were necessary the teaching of all those subjects which enter into the course prescribed. We may still, however, go on to ask whether the bearing of these subjects upon future school-work, may not itself be profitably recommended as a study, and made a matter of instruction. It is not every mind which can for itself see how the possession of higher knowledge is subservient to the communication of lower; and, indeed, there are many with whom it never becomes so. We are far from wishing to see every subject approached with a pædagogic view, but, where our object is confessedly a professional education, we are more or less bound to regard them under that aspect; and, if throughout we can connect our present studies with the work for which they are intended as a preparation, we are surely realizing the object we have in view.

It is certainly the wish to sccure this which has led to the introduction of the particular question to which we have alluded. The papers, in addition to the demand, What do you know about this? for the future will also ask, How do you know it? With what completeness and method have you apprehended it? Have you such a grasp of it, as to have made it your own, and to enable you to teach it to others? and in what way will it assist you to impart knowledge of kindred subjects? For ourselves, we are glad to see such questions asked, believing that it will do much to produce

soundness of knowledge, as well as to make that knowledge available professional capital. The value of knowledge depends not so much upon its extent, as upon the form in which it exists in the' mind. This is true whether we regard it as a possession, or as a means of intellectual culture, and when, viewing it under both those aspects, we look to a further communication of it, teaching that those we teach may teach others, the responsibility of selecting and arranging the stores, of giving the due estimate of their value, of communicating the secret of the power to use them, as well as of the process of collecting them is most evidently bound upon us. It is doubtless a most onerous one, but to evade it is to deny our special calling.

I

With regard to the preparation that will be necessary in order to meet and answer these new demands, we believe that it will be found to be indirect, and be simply good teaching. Perhaps the wish here may be father to the thought, for we confess that this kind of questions to which we are alluding would to our thinking lose a great part of their value, if they should come habitually to take such a form that they might be anticipated. In that case they would artificially create a kind of appendix to every subject, which would separately treat of that subject with reference to ædagogy. Facts might still be poured into the mind with a viewto answering the demand for them, and the memory furnished with a few dicta which should set forth the relation of these facts to the minds of children. Such a result would, it must be confessed, be most lamentable. We need not say, however, that we do not anticipate such a developement. On the contrary, we believe that these questions have been devised expressly to reward the labours which shall by thinking over a subject make the mind a master of it, and to depreciate pro tanto the value of such knowledge as mere memory can acquire. It is certainly possible for an intelliget man so to frame questions, as to detect who has, and who has not, so read a subject that he is qualified to give others a clear notion of it; and moreover to make them such as no one can well answer who has not for himself gone below the surface of the subject, and apprehended its first principles. The truth is that method, to be good, need not be conscious. Method, of course, may be taught as positive science, and we have no wishfeeling fully the importance and necessity of such teaching-to depreciate it. It may, however, also be taught indirectly, and, in fact, must of necessity be involved implicitly in all good teaching.

No one, for instance, could teach Euclid thoroughly, without giving some clear notions of the first principles of Logic. Again, in examining an English author critically, some idea must be gained of the first principles of language, of its natural and orderly developement, and its relation to our thoughts. The analysis of our common speech would be necessitated, and in this way the problems which would meet a teacher in his practical work of teaching children Grammar would have been unconsciously presented to his mind. Many of these newly-introduced questions of the last year (1856) had thus no doubt been so far anticipated, that the problems which they suggested for solution, though new in form, were already familiar subjects of thought. No one, for instance, could have studied Algebra intelligently without having considered its relation to Arithmetic; and having prepared himself with some materials for answering the question, What new ideas and conceptions does it introduce? If such a question is a fair sample of what we may expect, we cannot but think that the teaching of elementary Algebra is ennobled as an employment, and also that there will be a better guarantee that the study of it shall have an appreciable influence upon the future efficiency of our trained masters.

sary,

When we say that we believe that the best preparation for such questions will lie in good teaching, we do not mean to assert that no explicit instruction with reference to these points will be necesor advisable. The natural effect of recognizing such knowledge as necessary to be known, and giving a distinct premium upon it, must of course be to give a greater prominence in our training to such teaching as best sets forth the practical import of the subjects taught. Direct instruction will of course have its place, but the great good producible seems to us still to be in this, that encouragement is given to laying our foundations surer and stronger, to spending time over the careful inculcation of principles, and the analysis of processes. Hitherto, we cannot assert that this has been the case. A great mischief, inseparable to some extent from all examinations, is, that they afford no sure test of distinction between one whose knowledge is really his own, and one who by dint of a good memory has made it nominally his for a certain time and a certain purpose. The tendency to cram before the final event has been felt by all who have ever submitted to such an ordeal. To eliminate this tendency must be felt to be desirable, and we see no surer way than to propose such questions as put mere memory at a disadvantage. It is generally acknowledged that an admixture