Of

within certain limits, as in the Leyden jars, contributes towards the general effect. If there were no advantage in collective instruction, why do persons assemble themselves to hear a lecture delivered by word of mouth, when they can read one, to say the least, equally perfect and effective at home? Rut mere lecturing will not meet the wants of young learners, however suited to the condition of minds less volatile and better disciplined. Children must not be mere passive auditors. They must take a positive and active part in the process of instruction, if they are to hear with advantage to themselves. A very ancient system of conveying information, so as to secure the advantage of co-operation, was the Catechetical, a system of questions and answers. The Catechetical method may be made very effective by being inductive, leading the disciple from step to step in the mental process, from the known to the unknown. this kind was the Socratic, adopted by the great Grecian philosopher, whose name it suggests. The Cathechetical method, however, is not adapted to a large number of learners. The same answers cannot be expressed in the same form, however correct in substance; and on this account the teacher cannot receive them, except from individuals. The method fails therefore in eliciting from the multitude the evidence that they follow their master; and at the same time the work of co-operation is checked. The Elliptical method meets this want. If natural ellipses be employed, they will naturally be supplied with less variety than will answers to questions. They will furnish the Teacher with a test by which to judge how far his scholars acccompany him, and secure the great object of their co-operation. But in Elliptical teaching the greatest skill is required. It is the most difficult instrument to attain, as it is the most effective when attained. A superficial observer of the Elliptical mode fancies nothing can be more easy to practice. He hears a gallery lecture conducted, ellipses formed and supplied, and forthwith, not without considerable selfsufficiency, proceeds to practise a sort of bastard system, elliptical indeed, but as different from the real method, as a motionless, lifeless statue is from its living original. What can be easier than to utter an unfinished sentence, leave the completion to the class before him, and call this the elliptical method?

We shall now proceed to lay down rules by which the Elliptical method may be guarded from abuse,-rules to obey which with accuracy and effect require real ability, and long experience, and laborious practice.

Rule I.-Ellipses should be natural. By this we mean that they should not be such as neither children nor perhaps any one else could be expected to supply.

Rule II.-Ellipses should be regulated in their character by the

age and ability of the children. If too difficult and above their reach, they will become dejected; if too easy, they will become listless.

Rule III.—Ellipses should be such only as require an absolute effort of the mind to supply them, and are incapable of being filled up by a guess. The ellipsis should indicate a fresh step in the reasoning process on the part of the Teacher, and the filling up should point out to him whether or not that step has been taken. If the ellipsisis itself one calculated to ascertain this fact, and if the answer shows that the children miss the point in view, his duty is to return to common ground and start afresh. If, however, an ellipsis is an unmeaning one, and random replies proceed as a consequence from the children, the whole becomes a mere burlesque or farce; the worst habits are fostered, and however stiff and decorous be the outward demeanour, there is a gallery of undisciplined minds. In order to extend the interest of his children as widely as possible, the Teacher will not only select sometimes one kind of subject and sometimes another to suit the varied tastes and mental characters of his children, but in every subject he will so vary the nature of his ellipses as successively to interest now the imaginative boy, now the logical boy, and now the boy of good memory. If his ellipses can only be applied by conjectures, he must expect to forfeit the attention, rot to say, the good opinion of them all,-unless indeed we except the imaginative.

Rule IV.-Only rational methods must be adopted to lead the gallery right when it is wrong. When an ellipsis has been falsely filled up, a question may be asked or another ellipsis formed; but in each case the question or ellipsis must have a direct bearing upon the subject. A skilful Master will learn from the false filling up not only that the children have mistaken him, but how the mistake has originated. It is his duty, by a question or some inductive ellipsis, to direct the mind of his hearers to juster conclusions. The last step up the hill was proved to be larger than they could take with him. Let him not, indeed, tell them, for this is to drag them up; but let him come back, and take a somewhat more circuitous path. We will illustrate this point by an example. I am explaining the principle of the common pump. I begin by illustrating the pressure of the air by the straw, in this manner :

I take this reed, or hollow straw, and place one end in my mouth (if an ellipsis is made before mouth, it might be filled up at conjecture with hand or pocket, as well as mouth), and the other in a basin of water. After I exhaust the air from the reed, there will be a-void. (Here an ellipsis is proper, in order to ascertain whether they have an insight into the first step of the process.) Yes, a void, or an— empty space. (The advantage of this ellipsis will be clear. If one

technical term is unintelligible to a child, the whole lesson must be lost upon him.) If there is a void within the empty straw there will, of course, be no pressure of the atmosphere upon the water which is in the straw. (This ellipsis calls the attention of those in the class who might not have filled up the ellipsis, or misunderstood those who did.) Now, all answer. There is no air now pressing upon-the water in the straw. But there is pressure upon the outer water, and the pressure will be conveyed in every(The children are at a loss. Here the memory is in fault, and as the object of questions mixed among ellipses is to stimulate the mind in a new direction, the Teacher may proceed thus.) Do you not remember that once I explained, by some experiments, some peculiar property about the pressure of fluids? Hands are now held up, and the boy selected to answer says-Fluids press equally in all directions. Well, then, the presssre of the air upon the outward water is felt in every direction. Yes; upwards, downwards, and-sideways. If, therefore, the water below the reed is pressed upwards, for we need not mind the other pressures, and there is no pressure-downwards, (this ellipsis should be repeated by reason of the lapse of time, and its importance to the logical process), it will follow that the water will be forced up the reed. (The nature of the ellipsis to be employed in the last step will depend upon the Teacher's impression of the ability of the children, or of his own success in the previous inductive processes. There are other ellipses which might be formed, which we give in the order of their simplicity :—

(a) the water will be forced up the-reed.

(b) the water will be-forced up the reed.

(c) it will happen that-the water will be forced up the reed.

(a) would be an ellipsis nearly equivalent to telling; (b) would be a satisfactory filling up; (c) would manifest peculiar intelligence). Rule V.-Ellipses should be interspersed with questions. The frequency of ellipses should depend upon the age of the children. The younger the children are, the more they need their attention to be kept up by taking a part through filling up constant ellipses. As children increase in years, their habits of attention will be improved, their interest in the subject more easily excited; and ellipses should be confined to the development of the subject, and be strictly such as require a distinct, mental effort to supply, while more frequent recourse should be had to questions, the number of which should have a direct ratio to the age and proficiency of the children.

Rule IV.A question should never terminate in an ellipsis. And this for the simplest reason, that the filling up of the ellipsis will not be the answer to the question.

Rule VII.-No question should be asked of a gallery which admits of

the simple answer "yes" or "no," because it tempts guesses, and it affords no opportunity of showing how an answerer has reasoned wrongly.

Rule VIII.-No question should be asked of a whole gallery which admits of a variety of replies. An appeal should be made to the hands of the children, or disorder will be the necessary consequence. The Teacher should take answers from many, especially from the more diffident, for the purpose of giving them encouragement.

MORAL TRAINING.

It is impossible that a teacher can perform his duties with skill and effect, unless he possesses some clear knowledge of the material on which he has to work. Now, what is that material? The intellect of a child merely? Evidently, no: the whole being constitutes it; the physical, the intellectual, the moral nature, must all be kept in view by any one who would really, and in the full sense of the word, educate a child. The question is not, which is the most important of these three: although this seems to have been made the question, and to have been answered by the almost exclusive attention which has been directed to the intellectual, and the entire neglect in many cases, and nearly so in all, of the physical and moral. But the question is,-how is the whole child to be educated? Which is the best way in which to develope all the faculties that he possesses? Numbers are ready to offer their opinions, and numbers of systems are abroad. It is not our business here to point out the excellencies of this or that system, or to hold up our own as the paragon of educational schemes, strongly attached to it though we are; but we must protest against any plan which aims at only a portion of the object te be accomplished; which would have memory, for instance, stand for the intellect, or the sentiments for the whole of our moral nature. It is, of course, impossible that the physical and moral part of a child's nature should not receive some sort of education, even while the Teacher attends exclusively to the intellect. The child himself instinctively draws out and exercises his physical powers; and his moral being is growing, how we will not say, but it is growing daily, with or without culture; and many times when the intellect is beauteous and blooming as a garden, the heart is barren and desolate as a wilderness. Have we not, all of us who are engaged in practical teaching, seen many instances of this? It is doubtless a thing to be deplored that every accession of useful knowledge does not lead to our greater purity as moral beings; but the fact is no more lamentable than undoubted, that knowledge has

of itself no such tendency. Nay, it is too often true, that the contrary is the fact; knowledge and genius too frequently gild the grossest corruption, and shed a false glory on the most guilty career. The reader's ready memory will not need the citation of any examples of this; they are, alas! too numerous and too well-known.

It is from this cause, we conceive, that many well-intentioned people have seriously some objections against education as a whole. They cannot see that a head full of knowledge makes a man's heart a bit the better. Nay, "had not," they cry, with a hardly pardonable exultation, "had not the criminal, lately executed, learnt to read and write, and cast accounts?" They say he had, we are forced to reply:-and we much fear, if he had even learnt geography and grammar into the bargain, that he would have been the criminal still. Nevertheless we hope more from a man merely intellectually taught, than from blank ignorance; better a full head than an empty one in any case; and let it be understood that though knowledge has not any tendency to produce virtue, vice is not, therefore, to be called its offspring. But it is not, in truth, against education that these well meaning people object; it is, as it ought to be, against a spurious and partial one,-and we agree with them as far as their meaning goes; we give things their right names, and therein consists all the difference between us. If we see a gardener carefully cultivating one portion of his ground, to the neglect of another part, we do not wonder that though we see roses here, we find weeds and thistles there. We do not say to the roses-you caused these thistles and weeds; but we tell the man, you should have done this, and not have left the other undone; it is not the cultivation that we condemn but it is the partial and exclusive kind of cultivation that merits our

censure.

Far be it from us to depreciate intellectual training. What we desire earnestly to warn teachers of youth against is the neglect of the other portions of a right education. And we give this warning because we know how much it is needed. Let us ask the reader of

these words,-a teacher, we suppose, earnest in his work, do you never find yourself paying your attention solely to the intellectual advancement of your School? Do not Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, drive from your thoughts, for a day or two at least, all regard to the moral habits of your pupils? Is it ever the case that you punish a boy as much, and in a similar way for mis-spelling a word, as for uttering a falsehood? Is conscience as much cultivated as memory? And are patriotism and an enlarged love for the whole human family, made to keep pace with the increase of geographical lore? Finally, the teacher may ascertain whether he is wanting in this important respect, by asking himself which is the most difficult