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that stimulant. If so, there would be a clear moral gain. Be this as it may, there is no need to bring it forward prematurely, or to press its application at the beginning. In the infant stage, where the endeavour is to draw out the amicable sentiments, it is better kept back. For tasks that are easy and interesting, it is unnecessary. The pupils that possess unusual aptitude, should be incited to modesty rather than to assumption.

The greater prizes and distinctions affect only a very small number. Place-capturing, as Bentham phrases it, affects all more or less, although, in the lower end of a class, position is of small consequence. Too often the attainments near the bottom are nil. A few contesting eagerly for being first, and the mass phlegmatic, is not a healthy class.

Prizes may be valuable in themselves, and also a token of superiority. Small gifts by parents are useful incitements to lessons; the school contains prizes for distinction that only a small number can reach. The schoolmaster's means of reward is chiefly confined to approbation, or praise, a great and flexible instrument, yet needing delicate manipulation. Some kinds of merit are so palpable as to be described by numerical marks. Equal, in point of distinctness, is the fact that a thing is right or wrong, in part or in whole; it is sufficient approbation to pronounce that a question is correctly answered, a passage properly explained. This is the praise that envy cannot assail. Most unsafe are phrases of commendation; much care is required to make them both discriminating and just. They need to have a palpable basis in facts. Distinguished merit should not always be attended with pæans; silent recog

nition is the rule, the exceptions must be such as to extort admiration from the most jealous. The controlling circumstance is the presence of the collective body; the teacher is not speaking for himself alone, but directing the sentiments of a multitude, with which he should never be at variance; his strictly private judgments should be privately conveyed. Bentham's 'ScholarJury Principle,' although not formally recognized in modern methods, is always tacitly at work. The opinion of the school, when at its utmost efficiency, is the united judgment of the head and the members, the master and the mass. Any other state of things is war: although this too may be unavoidable.

Punishment.

The first and readiest, and ever the best, form of Punishment is Censure, Reprobation, Dispraise, to which are applicable all the maxims above laid down for praise. Definite descriptions of definite failures, without note or comment, are a power to punish. When there are aggravations, such as downright carelessness, a damaging commentary may be added; but in using terms of reprobation, still more strict regard has to be paid to discrimination and justice. The degrees of badness are sometimes numerical-measured by the quantity of lesson missed, and the repetition of the failure this very definiteness literally stated is more cutting than epithets.

Strong terms of reproof should be sparing, in order to be more effective. Still more sparing ought to be tones of anger. Loss of temper, however excusable, is really a victory to wrongdoers; although for the moment

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it may strike terror. Unless a man is of fiendish nature throughout, he cannot maintain a consistent course, if he gives way to temper. Indignation under control is a mighty weapon. Yet it is mere impotence to utter threats when the power of execution is known to be wanting. There is nothing worse for authority than to over-vaunt itself; this is the fatal step to the ridiculous.

Punishments must go deeper than words; indeed, the efficacy of blame depends on something else to follow. Bearing in mind what are the evil tendencies to be encountered in school discipline-want of application being the most constant-we may review the different kinds of penalties that have been placed at the disposal of the schoolmaster. The occasional aggravation of disorder and rebellion has also to be encountered, but with an eye to the main requisite.

Simple forms of Disgrace have been invented, in the shape of shameful positions, and humiliating isolation. As appealing to the sense of shame, these are powerful with many, but not with all; their power varies with the view taken of them by the collective body, as well as with individual sensitiveness. They answer for smaller offences, but not for the greatest; they may do to begin with, but they rapidly lose power by repetition. It is a rule in punishment to try slight penalties at first: with the better natures, the mere idea of punishment is enough; severity is entirely unnecessary. It is a coarse and blundering system that knows of nothing but the severe and degrading sorts.

Detention from play, or keeping in after hours, is very galling to the young; and it ought to suffice for even serious offences; especially for riotous and unruly

tendencies, for which it has all the merits of 'characteristicalness.' The excess of activity and aggressiveness is met by withholding the ordinary legitimate outlets.

Tasks or impositions are the usual punishment of neglect of lessons, and are also employed for rebelliousness; the pain lies in the intellectual ennui, which is severe to those that have no liking for books in any shape. They also possess the irksomeness of confinement and fatigue-drill. They may be superadded to shame, and the combination is a formidable penalty.

With all these various resources ingeniously pliedEmulation, Praise, Censure, Forms of Disgrace, Confinement, Impositions—the necessity for Corporal Punishments should be nearly done away with. In any wellregulated school, where all the motives are carefully graded, through a long series of increasing privations and penalties, there should be no cases but are sufficiently met. The presence of pupils that are not amenable to such means is a discord and an anomaly; and the direct remedy would consist in removing them to some place where the lower natures are grouped together. Inequality of moral tone is as much to be deprecated in a class as inequality of intellectual advancement. There should be Reformatories, or special institutions, for those that cannot be governed like the majority.

Where corporal punishment is kept up, it should be at the far end of the list of penalties; its slightest application should be accounted the worst disgrace, and should be accompanied with stigmatizing forms. It should be regarded as a deep injury to the person that inflicts it, and to those that have to witness it-as the height of shame and infamy. It ought not to be re

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peated with the same pupil: if two or three applications are not enough, removal is the proper course.

The misfortune is that in the National Schools the worst and most neglected natures have to be introduced: yet they should not brutalize a whole school. Even when children are habituated to blows at home, it does not follow that these are necessary at school; parents are often unskilful, as well as hampered in their circumstances, and emergencies are pressing; the treatment at school may easily rise above the conduct of the family. In many instances the school will be a welcome haven to the children of troubled homes; and lead to the generous response of good behaviour.

In point of fact, however, the children of wretchedness are not always those that give trouble, nor is it the schools where these are found that are most given to corporal punishments. The schoolmaster's most wayward subjects come often from good families; and they are found in schools of the highest grade. There should be no difficulty in sending away from superior schools all such as could not be disciplined without the degradation of flogging.'

1 Testimonies are adduced from very distinguished men, to the effect that without flogging they would have done nothing. Melanchthon, Johnson, Goldsmith, are all quoted for a sentiment of this kind. We must, however, interpret the fact on a wider basis. There was no intermediate course in those days between spoiling and corporal punishment: he that spared the rod hated the child. Many ways can now be found of spurring young and capable minds to application; and corporal punishment would take an inferior position in the mere point of efficiency.

It is not to be held that corporal punishment, to such extent as is permissible, is the severest form of punishment that may be administered in connexion with the school. For mere pain, a whipping would often be chosen in preference to the intolerable irksomeness of confinement during