all faith and reverence in the learner, growing out of a sense of his ignorance and dependence, are discarded, and the frightened stripling is continually rapped on the knuckles, if he does not at every step show the truth of his allegations by what is called a course of reasoning. Children reason, of course. They should be encouraged and taught to reason. No teacher, who is wise, will neglect this part of a child's intellectual powers. But he will not consider this the season for its main, normal development. He will hold this subject for the present subordinate to many others. Moreover, the methods of reasoning, which he does adopt, will be of a peculiar kind, suited to the nature of childhood, the results being mainly intuitional, rather than the fruits of formal logic. To oblige a young child to go through a formal syllogistic statement in every step in elementary arithmetic, for instance, is simply absurd. It makes nothing plain to a child's mind which was not plain before. On the contrary, it often makes a muddle of what had been perfectly clear. What was in the clear sunlight of intuition, is now in a haze, through the intervening medium of logical terms and forms, through which he is obliged to look at it.

A primary teacher asks her class this question: "If I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, how many marbles can I buy with 5 pennies?" A bright boy who should promptly answer "30" would be sharply rebuked. Little eight-year old Solon on the next bench has been better trained than that. With stately and solemn enunciation he delivers himself of a performance somewhat of this sort. "If I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, how many marbles can I buy with 5 pennies? Answer-I can buy 5 times as many marbles with 5 pennies as I can buy with 1 penny. If, therefore, I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, I can buy 5 times as many marbles with 5 pennies; and 5 times 6 marbles are 30 marbles. Therefore, if I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, I can buy 30 marbles with 5 pennies."

And this is termed reasoning! And to train children, by forced and artificial processes, to go through such a rigmarole of words, is recommended as a means of cultivating their reasoning power and of improving their power of expression! It is not pretended that children by such a process become more expert in reckoning. On the contrary, their movements as

ready reckoners are rather retarded by it. Instead of learning to jump at once to the conclusion, lightning-like, by a sort of intuitional process, which is of the very essence of an expert accountant, they learn laboriously to stay their march by a cumbersome and confusing circumlocution of words. And the expenditure of time and toil needed to acquire these formulas of expression, which nine times out of ten are to those young minds the mere dicta magistri, is justified on the ground that the children, if not learning arithmetic, are learning to reason. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not advocate the disuse of explanations. Let teachers explain, let children give explanations. Let the rationale of the various processes through which the child goes, receive a certain amount of attention. But the extreme into which some are now going, in primary education, is that of giving too much time to explanation and to theory, and too little to practice. We reverse, too, the order of nature in this matter. What it now takes weeks and months to make clear to the immature understanding, is apprehended at a later day with ease and delight at the very first statement. There is a clear and consistent philosophy underlying this whole matter. It is simply this. In the healthy and natural order of development in educating a young mind, theory should follow practice, not precede it. Children learn the practice of arithmetic very young. They take to it naturally, and learn it easily, and become very rapidly expert practical accountants. But the science of arithmetic is quite another matter, and should not be forced upon them until a much later stage in their advancement.

To have a really correct apprehension of the principle of decimal notation, for instance, to understand that it is purely arbitrary, and that we might in the same way take any other number than ten as the base of a numerical scale,-that we might increase for instance by fives, or eights, or nines, or twelves, just as well as by tens-all this requires considerable maturity of intellect, and some subtlety of reasoning. Indeed we doubt whether many of the pretentious sciolists, who insist so much on young children giving the rationale of everything, have themselves ever yet made an ultimate analysis of the first step in arithmetical notation. Many of them would open their

eyes were you to tell them, for instance, that the number of figures on your two hands may be just as correctly expressed by the figures 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, as by the figures 10,—a truism perfectly familiar to every one acquainted with the generalizations of higher arithmetic. Yet it is up-hill work to make the matter quite clear to a beginner. We may wisely therefore give our children at first an arbitrary rule for notation. We give them an equally arbitrary rule for addition. They accept these rules and work upon them, and learn thereby the practical operations of arithmetic. The theory will follow in due time. When perfectly familiar with the practice and the forms of arithmetic, and sufficiently mature in intellect, they awaken gradually and surely, and almost without an effort, to the beautiful logic which underlies the science.

How do we learn language in childhood? Is it not solely on authority and by example? A child who lives in a family where no language is used but that which is logically and grammatically correct, will learn to speak with logical and grammatical correctness long before it is able to give any account of the processes of its own mind in the matter, or indeed to understand those processes when explained by others. In other words, practice in language precedes theory. It should do so in other things. The parent who should take measures to prevent a child from speaking its mother tongue, except just so far and so fast as it could understand and explain the subtle logic which underlies all language, would be quite as wise as the teacher who refuses to let a child become expert in practical reckoning, until it can understand and explain at every step the rationale of the process,-who will not suffer a child to learn the multiplication table until it has mastered the metaphysics of the science of numbers, and can explain with the formalities of syllogism exactly how and why seven times nine make sixty-three.

These illustrations have carried us a little, perhaps, from our subject. But they seemed necessary to show that we are not beating the air. We have feared lest, in our very best schools, in the rebound from the exploded errors of the old system, we have unconsciously run into an error in the opposite extreme. Our position on the particular point now under consideration,

may be summed up briefly, as follows: 1. In developing the faculties, we should follow the order of nature. 2. The faculties of memory and faith should be largely exercised and cultivated in childhood. 3. While the judgment and the reasoning faculty should be exercised during every stage of the intellectual development, the appropriate season for their main development and culture is near the close, rather than near the beginning, of an educational course. 4. The methods of reasoning used with children should be of a simple kind, dealing largely in direct intuitions, rather than formal and syllogistic. 5. It is a mistake to spend a large amount of time and effort in requiring young children formally to explain the rationale of their intellectual processes, and especially in requiring them to give such explanations before they have become by practice thoroughly familiar with the processes themselves.

We have thus endeavoured to set forth, in the first place, what a Normal School is, namely, a seminary for professional training in the art and science of teaching; and, secondly, to show, with some particularity and variety of illustration, what teaching is, in its very root and essence; and, to make the matter plainer, we have attempted to show the difference between teaching and training, and to explain some two or three out of very many different modes of teaching, and to discuss briefly one of the many points that are involved in the philosophy of education. Some distinct consideration of these subjects, which come up continually for discussion in a Normal School, seemed to be the very best line of argument for showing the necessity of such an institution. To appreciate the full force of this argument, it would be necessary, indeed, to consider the vast array of similar and connected subjects which beset the teacher's path, and which there is not time now even to enumerate. Let us merely name some few of these subjects. The Monitorial method of teaching.

The Catechetical method.

The Explanatory method.
The Synthetical method.

The Analytical method.

Modes of securing in a large school all the while something for all the children to do.

Modes of teaching particular branches: as Spelling, Reading, Mental Arithmetic, Written Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, Composition, Drawing, Penmanship, Vocal Music, &c. School apparatus and means for visible illustration.

The development and cultivation of the faculties of observation, attention, memory, association, conception, imagination, &c.

Modes of inspiring scholars with enthusiasm in study, and of cultivating habits of self-reliance.

Topics and times for introducing oral instruction.
Teaching with and without books.

Object Teaching.

The formation of museums, and collections of plants, minerals, &c.

Exchange of specimens of penmanship, maps, drawings, minerals, &c., with other schools.

School examinations. Their object, and the different modes of conducting them.

School celebrations, festivals, and excursions.

The daily preparation which a teacher should make for school.

Circumstances which make a teacher happy in his work.
Requisites for success in teaching.

Causes of failure in teaching.

Course to be pursued in organizing a new school.

Course to be pursued in admitting new scholars.
Making an order of exercises.

Making a code of rules.

Keeping registers of attendance and progress.

Duties of the teacher to the parents and to school directors. Opening and closing exercises of a school.

Moral and religious instruction and influences.

Modes of cultivating among children a love of truth, honesty, benevolence, and other virtues.

Modes of preventing lying, swearing, stealing, and other vices.

Modes of securing cleanliness of person, neatness of dress, courtesy of language, and gentleness of manners.

Modes of preserving the school-house and appurtenances from defacement.