school. The peculiarities of play-ground, school-room, and teachers required for this class of schools, should be carefully studied, and promptly and liberally provided. The school-room should be light, cheerful, and large enough for the evolutions of large classes,-furnished with appropriate seats, furniture, apparatus, and means of visible illustration, and having a retired, dry, and airy play-ground, with a shelter to resort to in inclement weather, and with flower borders, shrubbery, and shade-trees, which they should be taught to love and respect. The play-ground is as essential as the schoolroom for a Primary School, and is indeed the uncovered schoolroom of physical and moral education, and the place where the manners and personal habits of children can be better trained than elsewhere. With them, the hours of play and study, of 'confinement and recreation, must alternate more frequently than with older pupils. To teach these schools properly, to regulate the hours of play and study so as to give variety, vivacity, and interest to all of the exercises, without over-exciting the nervous system, or overtasking any faculty of mind or body,—to train boys and girls to mild dispositions, graceful and respectful manners, and unquestioning obedience,-to preserve and quicken a tenderness and sensibility of conscience as the instinctive monitor of the approach of wrong,-to cultivate the senses to habits of quick and accurate observation and discrimination,-to prevent the formation of artificial and sing-song tones,—to teach the use of the voice, and of simple, ready, and correct language, and to begin in this way, and by appropriate exercises in drawing, calculation, and lessons on the properties and classification of objects, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties,-to do all these things and more, require in the teacher a rare union of qualities, seldom found in one in a hundred of the male sex, and to be looked for with the greatest chance of success among females, " in whose own hearts, love, hope, and patience have first kept school," and whose laps seem always full of the blossoms of knowledge, to be showered on the heads and hearts of infancy and childhood. In the right education of early childhood, must we look for a corrective of the evils of society in our large cities and manufacturing villages, and for the beginning of a better and higher civilization than has yet blessed our world. The earlier we can establish, in every populous district, primary schools, under female teachers, whose hearts are made strong by deep religious principle,-who have faith in the power of Christian love steadily exerted to fashion anew the bad manners, and soften the harsh and self-willed perverseness of neglected children,— with patience to begin every morning, with but little, if any, perceptible advance beyond where they began the previous morning,-with prompt and kind sympathies, and ready skill in music, drawing, and oral methods, the better it will be for the cause of education, and for every other good cause.

THE following plan of a Play Ground for an Infant or Primary School is copied from "Wilderspin's Early Education."

The chief requisites in an infant-school play-ground are the following: A Climbing Stand; a Horizontal Bar; Parallel Bars; Wooden Swings; a Double Inclined Plane.

The Climbing Stand consists essentially of a frame-work of poles, which support ropes for climbing. One of the most simple and economical is made of two ordinary scaffold poles, planed smooth and painted, which support a transverse beam having hooks, to which the ropes are attached.

The dimensions may be as follows: Length of perpendicular poles, 15 feet, of which 4 feet are sunk in the ground; circumference of poles at the surface of the ground, 14 inches; length of transverse beam at top, 9 feet. To this beam are attached, by screwing in, two iron hooks, which support the ropes; these are 1 inches in diameter, to afford a firm grasp to the hand. In order

that the ropes may not wear through where attached to the hooks, they are spliced round an iron ring, which is grooved on the outer surface to give a firmer hold to the rope. Both the ropes should be attached to the bottom of the poles so as to hang loosely: if not fastened at the bottom, the children use them as swings while clinging to them, and are apt to injure themselves by falling, or others by coming violently in contact with them.

No apparatus is more advantageous: it is economical in its erection, and not liable to get out of order; it affords exercise to a number of children at the same time, a succession being constantly engaged in climbing and descending the ropes and poles; the muscular exertion is not violent, but decidedly beneficial, expanding the chest, and giving power and freedom of motion to the arms. This exercise is also quite free from danger, the children never advancing higher up the ropes than they feel themselves secure. During the seven years the Home and Colonial Infant-school has been established, 200 children have been the average attendance, but no accidents have occurred from the use of the climbing-stand.

The Horizontal Bar consists of a wooden bar formed of beech, red deal, or some other tough wood not apt to splinter or warp, about three inches in diameter, and usually six feet long, turned or planed round and smooth, in order that the hands may not be blistered by the friction.

Every play-ground should possess two or three of these useful additions; one 6 feet from the ground, another 5 feet, and a third 4 feet high,—each one being supported and fixed firmly by a post at both ends. Or they may be arranged so that four posts will support the three bars. The exercises performed on the horizontal bars consist in the child remaining suspended by the arms and hands; in drawing the body up so as to look over the bar several times in succession; in traversing from one end of the bar to the other (suspended by the hands,) both backwards and forwards; in swinging the body whilst suspended from the bar.

The Parallel Bar consists of two bars placed parallel with one another, each being from 6 to 8 feet long, 4 inches deep by 2 inches wide, with the corners rounded off. The posts that support these bars in their position should be 18 inches apart. The bars should project four inches beyond the post.

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Two sets of parallel bars are advantageous, one being 2 feet 9 inches high for the younger children, the other 4 feet high for the elder.

The exercises on these bars consist in supporting the body on the arms, one hand resting on each bar, and by moving each hand alternately, proceeding forwards and backwards along the bars; in swinging the body between the arms; and in springing over the bar on each side, both backwards and forwards.

The Wooden Springs afford a kind of exercise extremely popular with the younger children, who are not sufficiently active to take part in the other exercises. Each swing consists of two distinct parts: 1. A piece of 2-inch deal, 1 foot wide and 3 feet long, one end of which is sunk firmly in the ground, the other projecting 18 inches above the surface. At each edge of this piece is screwed on an iron plate, with an eye to receive the iron pivot on which the upper piece works. The upper, or horizontal piece, is made of 2-inch plank, 1 foot wide and 12 feet long. At each end of this piece three handles, formed of 11-inch deal, are strongly mortised in, 1 foot apart, thus forming seats for three children at each end. Between the handles the plank should be rounded at the edges, so as to form an easy seat. At the under surface of each end a small block of wood is fixed, to prevent the plank wearing by striking the ground.

The above directions should be adhered to. If the support be made lower, the motion of the swing is much lessened; if the plank be made shorter, or the support higher, the swing approaches too nearly to the perpendicular, and serious accidents may ensue from the children being thrown violently from the seats. The whole should be made as stout as recommended, otherwise it is apt to break from the violent action.

The Double Inclined Plane is adapted more especially for the younger children. It consists merely of a support of two-inch deal, 1 foot wide, and projecting 3 feet from the ground. On this is laid the ends of two planks, each 12 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 14 inch in thickness. On the upper surface of each plank may be nailed, at intervals of eight or ten inches, small crosspieces, to prevent the feet slipping.

The use of the inclined plane is, that by ascending and descending it, children acquire a facility in balancing themselves. The exercise is beneficial, as it calls into action the muscles of the legs and even of the body. It also furnishes an excellent situation to jump from, as the children can themselves vary the height of the leap at pleasure.

The general use of all these various exercises is, that the different muscles of the body may be strengthened, and the children thus fitted for a future life of labor, and better prepared to escape in case of accidents.

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The house should stand in a dry and airy situation, large enough to allow a spacious play ground. No pains should be spared on this principal and paramount department of a proper infant school. The more extensive the ground may be, the better; but the smallest size for 200 children ought to be 100 feet in length, by at least 60 in breadth. It should be walled round, not so much to prevent the children from straying, as to exclude intruders upon them, while at play: for this purpose, a wall or close paling, not lower than six feet high, will be found sufficient. With the exception of a flower border, from four to six feet broad all round, lay the whole ground, after leveling and draining it thoroughly, with small binding gravel, which must be always kept in repair, and well swept of loose stones. Watch the gravel, and prevent the children making holes in it to form pools in wet weather; dress the flower border, and keep it always neat; stock it well with flowers and shrubs, and make it as gay and beautiful as possible. Train on the walls cherry and other fruit trees and currant bushes; place some ornaments and tasteful decorations in different parts of the border-as a honeysuckle bower, &c., and separate the dressed ground from the graveled area by a border of strawberry plants, which may be protected from the feet of the children by a skirting of wood on the outside, three inches high, and painted green, all round the ground. Something even approaching to elegance in the dressing and decking of the playground, will afford a lesson which may contribute to refinement and comfort for life. It will lead not only to clean and comfortable dwellings, but to a taste for decoration and beauty, which will tend mainly to expel coarseness, discomfort, dirt, and vice, from the economy of the humbler classes.

For the excellent and safe exercise afforded by the Rotary Swing, erect, at the distance of thirty feet from each other, two posts or masts, from sixteen to eighteen feet high above the ground; nine inches diameter at the foot, diminishing to seven and a

half at top; of good wellseasoned, hard timber; charred with fire, about three feet under ground, fixed in sleepers, and bound at top with a strong iron hoop. In the middle of the top of the post is sunk perpendicularly a cylindrical hole, ten inches deep, and two inches in diameter, made strong by an iron ring two inches broad within the top, and by a piece of iron an inch thick to fill up the bottom, tightly fixed in. A strong pivot of iron, of diameter to turn easily in the socket described, but with as little lateral play as possible, is placed vertically in the hole, its upper end standing 4 inches above it. On this pivot, as an axle, and close to the top of the post, but so as to turn easily, is fixed a wheel of iron, twentyfour inches diameter, strengthened by four