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being coeval with the higher stages of Arithmetic. It can be very successfully conducted upon the immediate surroundings of the school, and these can be put into their Geographical relations at the same time; while the imagination can be conducted to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, by naming more localities that stretch out in the several directions. The explanation of the four points can readily be carried up to the course of the sun, yielding at the same time the beginning of an Astronomy lesson, but the teacher should beware of pursuing these collateral lessons beyond his immediate purpose.

. The geography of the infant school,' says Currie, 'should be pictorial and descriptive. Commencing with the elements of natural scenery that fall under the child's observation, and carefully noting their distance and relative direction from the school, and from each other-the hill, the mountain, the brook, the river, the plain, the forest, the moor, the rich mould, the island, the sea, the cliff, the cape, the castle, the village, the city, that may be seen in prospect from the school; the productions of his own land—its animals, its trees and flowers and herbs, its metals; the men of his own land -their occupations, their customs, their habits, their food, their clothing; it should seek to make the child. realize the corresponding features of other lands and climes by comparison with what it has observed in its own. We should even set before his eye, when possible, specimens and pictures of foreign products and scenes, and for the rest appeal to his imagination to take off the impressions from our vivid description. Such is an outline in brief of the course the instruction should follow.'

It is difficult to believe in the possibility of such a course in the infant stage. It implies first that the child has had full opportunities of seeing places and objects. Next is assumed that the child's mode of looking at scenery has been elevated above its own petty amusements, and has seized the meaning of things in the great scale. Further, there is taken for granted the constructive or imaginative power of realizing other scenes differently arranged and made up. That any child before ten could be capable of such an effort is not to be credited. It begins to be practicable to the well-educated youth of twelve or thirteen, and approaches the greatest heights of a successful training of the conceptive powers.

Nevertheless, by a series of well-conducted object lessons, desultory to the superficial glance, but in the highest degree methodical underneath, the elementary facts of Geography may be gradually instilled, and a preparation made for the last stage of formal teaching by the maps. A great quantity of Natural History and other knowledge is taken for granted in carrying out the modern method of endeavouring to conceive in full concreteness the aspects of the various countries. But, indeed, it may be doubted whether so high an aim is really accomplished; yet, there is good done, and not harm, in entertaining it.

When the power of conceiving is sufficiently advanced, and when it has been fully exercised in geographical facts, the methodical study commences and is a tolerably plain course. The selection suitable for pupils at different stages and in different circumstances

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gives little trouble. The subject will come up again presently in connection with our next discussion.

Of all the departments of early teaching, none is so unmanageable as History. Its protean phases of information and of interest, its constant mixture of what attracts the youngest with what is intelligible only to the maturest minds, renders it especially troublesome in early teaching. Nothing comes sooner home to the child than narratives of human beings, their pursuits, their passions, their successes, and their disasters, their virtues and their vices, their rewards and their punishments, their enmities and their friendships, their failures and their triumphs. Arranged in circumstantial narrative, with the suspense of a plot, and the sensational conclusion, these incidents of humanity arouse feelings and interest, at the first dawn of intelligence, and never lose their magic.

Our

Narratives, as we have seen, come on the stage to lighten the toil of learning to read; they are not further counted on, except for making an amiable or moral impression. Gradually they are made the vehicle of easy kinds of useful information, but are not yet thought of as supplying historical knowledge. In the biographical form, they begin to enlarge the acquaintance with human beings of the more eminent class, but with a view to excite emotions in the first instance. The narratives of social collective action, which alone is properly historical knowledge, start with battles, which awaken the early and powerful passions of the mind, and give the first bias to the sentiments towards our own and other nations. The youthful mind soon comes to

understand the meaning of invasions, aggression, pillage, conquest, on one hand, and victorious resistance, on the other, with the incidents of co-operation and alliances on either side. In the course of these exciting narratives, there springs up a vague understanding of the great fact of society-Sovereignty and Subjection; the parental sphere being a help to the conception. By degrees, the ordinary action of the sovereign power in time of peace comes to be intelligible in the more prominent features, as administering Justice, raising Taxes, and making Public Works. With sovereignty attached to one person arises the conception of the successive reigns of the sovereigns, with which is associated the mention of great events, and especially wars and other explosive changes.

As with Geography, so with History, the first thing is to familiarize the mind with the elements, or constituents of historical changes or events. Only, these are of a greater degree of complexity, and belong to a far later stage. Moreover, the child lives in the midst. of the simpler geographical elements; views with its own eyes, hills, valleys, plains, rivers, cities. It is not so easy to bring it into the presence of historical elements. It knows family life, and a little beyond that; it knows of the policeman and his duties as representing in a humble way the power of the State. For historical conceptions, it must wait a much longer time, and take a great deal upon trust. But since the deep political forces, which it cannot understand, take the form of a stirring narrative, which it can in part understand, history is seldom entirely devoid of interest or debarred from leaving impressions, and in those impressions are mate

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rials that may one day constitute a portion of historical knowledge, in the highest forms. Children's history is simply the sensational events of history extracted with as little of the abstruser explanations as it is possible to give. It may be so conducted, and should be so conducted, as to impart an outline of correct chronology, which should be deposited in the memory at the earliest convenient moment when it is likely to be retained.

The reasons are obvious and many for beginning with our own country. We assume that there has preceded a view of the geography of the country, which fits into the history, so as to enhance the effect of both. Then all knowledge respecting the existing facts and arrangements of our nation-the Legislative, Administrative, and Judicial Systems, the Standing Army and Navy, the Religious Denominations in the three Kingdoms, Education, Agriculture, Trade, Manufactures, assists in making intelligible the history of the past.

There can be no systematic teaching of History in school years; but there may be an avoidance of perverse and erroneous methods. The attempt to plunge into modern European History at large with children of ten, can but confuse; select episodes should be chosen on the ground of their impressiveness. The same in regard to Ancient History, with its more stirring incidents, and its gorgeous mythology, which, as being the creation of the infancy of the race, has power to arrest the infant mind in the individual, and is presented with this express view. Seeing that very little of real instruction can come of all this, the point is to see that it makes an impression. on the feelings, and through them on the conceptive power or the imagination; if it falls flat, and has to be