The art of laying up in the memory geographical positions involves very delicate manipulation on the part of the teacher. The method of proceeding is that embodied in the rhetorical principles governing Description; the chief being to start with a comprehensive plan or outline, and to subdivide the whole into parts, either at once, or by successive divisions, as the case may require. At the stage of progress when pupils are expected to take up the map of Britain, they are competent to view the globe as a whole, with its divisions into continents and seas, and to descend by regular subdivision to our own country. The operation is as easy on the large scale as on the small.

The School-books give in unexceptionable order the topics to be stated in connection with the map of any part of the earth-larger or smaller. Of only recent introduction is the method of describing, that pictures out the surface in orderly array, dividing it into mountain ranges, valleys, plains, and giving these in their proper positions. The system was exemplified on the great scale by Ritter, and first carried out in this country in the Penny Cyclopædia.' It has since found its way into the smaller manuals, the earliest to adopt it being the manual of William Hughes. When the pupil is sufficiently advanced for a manual of this kind, the teacher's path is made quite plain. The following out of the position, boundaries, form, magnitude, and general aspect and features of the country, into the consequences entailed by these on the vegetable and animal products; the enumeration of those products; the account of the inhabitants, and their industries and social

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condition (Political Geography),-are all sufficiently well done in many text-books.

The science called Physical Geography' is something intermediate between ordinary Geography and the higher sciences, namely, Physics, Chemistry, Meteorology, Botany, Zoology, and Geology. It introduces considerations of cause and effect into Geographical facts, by selecting and stating in empirical form the principles methodically taught in the regular and fundamental sciences. A course of Physical Geography is subsequent and supplementary to proper Geography, while reacting upon it in the way that causation operates upon the knowledge of facts. It is also an introduction to the mother sciences; but until the principles are studied in their due order and dependence in these sciences also, they do not leave their mark behind them.

The teacher is tempted, now and then, to bring under the proper or descriptive Geography the scientific explanations of physical geography. Any such explanations should be very short and allusory; the two departments should be by no means intermingled.

There is a still greater temptation to include History with the descriptive Geography. This serves a purpose in rendering more intelligible and interesting many of the facts, especially of Political Geography. It should, however, be very shortly and sparingly done; being confined to the exact purpose of aiding Geography proper. Attention is properly called to features that determined great historical events, as a preparation for the study of the history, but without dragging in the history there and then. There is a separate branch of knowledge, falling under Political Philosophy, or Socio

logy, which traces the dependence of the social arrangements and social development of mankind upon physical circumstances. An interesting and salient fact taken from this department may be occasionally noticed in geographical teaching, but the department as a whole cannot be absorbed into School Geography. Like Physical Geography, it must have a place in the curriculum all to itself. At the same time, it is a merit in the Geography teacher to forecast this application, and unobtrusively provide for it.

In Geography, much has to be learnt as words, or little more; the verbal memory has a large share in the acquisition. In this view, the names should be relieved of dryness by various arts, as well as by endeavouring to impress real conceptions corresponding to them. Yet we must not overrate the conceptive power of young pupils, in a subject that in a great measure excludes the strong emotions. That a youth of ten should conceive the plains of India, with their vertical sun, their peculiar vegetation, their animals, and their swarming dusky population, is not to be supposed. The best arranged series of object lessons cannot prepare the mind for all the characteristic plants and animals of a tropical region; while the constructive effort that gives them their places in the landscape is possible only in the full maturity of the mind, and is even then attained by a very small number of persons.

Geography may in various ways be connected with the exercise of drawing. The drawing of maps impresses a country, just as copying a passage in a book impresses the author's language and meaning. In those cases where drawing is followed out as a fascination it

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carries with it an interest in the face of nature, and an enhanced power of conceiving the pictorial aspects of the world. In addition to which, the influence of poetry may come in aid of the geographical concrete. Tennyson's 'Brook' is the rendering of one of the numerous affluents of a mighty river.

HISTORY.

The transition from Geography to History is natural, when History is conceived in its highest or final form. But, as a subject of teaching, History passes through many different shapes. In those early narratives that seem indispensable to the interest of the first reading lessons, being almost the only device for riveting the attention of the very young, we have the initiation into history; indeed, the persistent catering for stories brings the teacher at last to actual History, through the intermediate stage of Biography. In the lives of kings, statesmen, generals, and other great men, we have the materials of history.

The full bearings of History cannot be understood without much previous knowledge, and some experience of the world; and where these requisites are found, there is little need for a teacher. The great historical works, ancient and modern, are the self-chosen private reading of our mature years.

The earliest lessons of a general kind, in connection with History, are lessons in human nature, in the ways, actions, and motives of men. These may be very elementary and obvious, as in the displays of selfishness, of devotedness, and of the various other forms of human passion. When such passions animate a nation, or a

collective assembly, they are facts of history. It is desirable, however, to bring before the older pupils the exact nature of society, as an assemblage of hunian beings in a certain fixed territory, for mutual interest and security, and presided over by a head, or governing power. Out of this arrangement comes law or social obedience, which is a great part of morality, and the type of the whole. History presents different forms of government, and different kinds of laws, and in its narrative portion contains the changes more or less violent in the relations of the governing body to the governed. When such matters as these are exemplified, history becomes a political education, as well as a moral engine. Select Object Lessons in History would be such as these: namely, the Constitutions of some of the more primitive nations, beginning, for example, with the Hill tribes of India, and leading up by degrees to our own Constitution. As a select lesson the topic Revolution' could be given, handled in the usual two forms, particular and general, or comparative. Some one Revolution, as the French, would supply a lesson in the particular or concrete; and a comparative view of different revolutions would be given apart as the general exercise.

History is taught in the two alternative and mutually supplementing methods-a comprehensive sketch of Universal History, and a full detail of select periods. The Universal History would embody a Chronology, which is the chart of history, and with that the great leading events of the world. A somewhat fuller view might be given of Modern European history; and a still fuller view of our own history. Outside of this would be set forth a minute sketch of certain epochs,