in Kindergartens or in the ordinary Primary Schools. A considerable experience in the art, and a long-continued study of the theory of education, will, I trust, be accepted as my warrant for expressing such judgments. Even in Germany, the land of scientific pedagogy, it is not rare to find avowed principles of action neglected or imperfectly carried out. To every one who carefully considers the state of education in England, and who compares the promise of theory with the results of practice, it will be apparent that the reform we need most begins at the beginning, with a true conception on the part of the teachers of what education really means. This involves a radical correction of the ordinary theories and this, again, a thorough education of the teachers in education itself. Now that the Bell Trustees, by their liberal grant of £10,000 towards the endowment of Chairs of Education at Edinburgh and St. Andrews, have recognised education as a psychological art, founded on scientific principles, we may hope to see some effective measures taken for the training of teachers. The question of training teachers for their high office will, it is to be hoped, henceforth supersede much of the profuse prate about education in which dilettanti inexperts and educationists' are so accustomed to indulge. If the facts and discussions of this little volume shall be found to have contributed anything satisfactory towards the solution of that question, it will have answered its purpose. JOSEPH PAYNE. KILDARE GARDENS, LONDON, NOTES OF A Professional Visit to the Kindergarten and other Schools for Primary Instruction in North Germany. INTRODUCTION. ONSIDERABLE interest had been awakened in my mind by the study of Fröbel's Principles of Elementary Education, as well as by some excellent specimens of their practical application which I had seen in London. The result of this interest was, that I delivered in February 1874, at the College of Preceptors, a lecture upon the subject. My lecture was strictly confined to as clear an account as I could give of the genesis of Fröbel's root-idea— A |