eyes were you to tell them, for instance, that the number of figures on your two hands may be just as correctly expressed by the figures 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, as by the figures 10,-a truism perfectly familiar to every one acquainted with the generalizations of higher arithmetic. Yet it is up-hill work to make the matter quite clear to a beginner. We may wisely therefore give our children at first an arbitrary rule for notation. We give them an equally arbitrary rule for addition. They accept these rules and work upon them, and learn thereby the practical operations of arithmetic. The theory will follow in due time. When perfectly familiar with the practice and the forms of arithmetic, and sufficiently mature in intellect, they awaken gradually and surely, and almost without an effort, to the beautiful logic which underlies the science.

How do we learn language in childhood? Is it not solely on authority and by example? A child who lives in a family where no language is used but that which is logically and grammatically correct, will learn to speak with logical and grammatical correctness long before it is able to give any account of the processes of its own mind in the matter, or indeed to understand those processes when explained by others. In other words, practice in language precedes theory. It should do so in other things. The parent who should take measures to prevent a child from speaking its mother tongue, except just so far and so fast as it could understand and explain the subtle logic which underlies all language, would be quite as wise as the teacher who refuses to let a child become expert in practical reckoning, until it can understand and explain at every step the rationale of the process,-who will not suffer a child to learn the multiplication table until it has mastered the metaphysics of the science of numbers, and can explain with the formalities of syllogism exactly how and why seven times nine make sixty-three.

These illustrations have carried us a little, perhaps, from our subject. But they seemed necessary to show that we are not beating the air. We have feared lest, in our very best schools, in the rebound from the exploded errors of the old system, we have unconsciously run into an error in the opposite extreme.

Our position on the particular point now under consideration,

may be summed up briefly, as follows: 1. In developing the faculties, we should follow the order of nature. 2. The faculties of memory and faith should be largely exercised and cultivated in childhood. 3. While the judgment and the reasoning faculty should be exercised during every stage of the intellectual development, the appropriate season for their main development and culture is near the close, rather than near the beginning, of an educational course. 4. The methods of reasoning used with children should be of a simple kind, dealing largely in direct intuitions, rather than formal and syllogistic. 5. It is a mistake to spend a large amount of time and effort in requiring young children formally to explain the rationale of their intellectual processes, and especially in requiring them to give such explanations before they have become by practice thoroughly familiar with the processes themselves.

We have thus endeavoured to set forth, in the first place, what a Normal School is, namely, a seminary for professional training in the art and science of teaching; and, secondly, to show, with some particularity and variety of illustration, what teaching is, in its very root and essence; and, to make the matter plainer, we have attempted to show the difference between teaching and training, and to explain some two or three out of very many different modes of teaching, and to discuss briefly one of the many points that are involved in the philosophy of education. Some distinct consideration of these subjects, which come up continually for discussion in a Normal School, seemed to be the very best line of argument for showing the necessity of such an institution. To appreciate the full force of this argument, it would be necessary, indeed, to consider the vast array of similar and connected subjects which beset the teacher's path, and which there is not time now even to enumerate. Let us merely name some few of these subjects. The Monitorial method of teaching.

The Catechetical method.

The Explanatory method.
The Synthetical method.

The Analytical method.

Modes of securing in a large school all the while something for all the children to do.

Modes of teaching particular branches: as Spelling, Reading, Mental Arithmetic, Written Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, Composition, Drawing, Penmanship, Vocal Music, &c. School apparatus and means for visible illustration.

The development and cultivation of the faculties of observation, attention, memory, association, conception, imagination, &c.

Modes of inspiring scholars with enthusiasm in study, and of cultivating habits of self-reliance.

Topics and times for introducing oral instruction.
Teaching with and without books.

Object Teaching.

The formation of museums, and collections of plants, minerals, &c.

Exchange of specimens of penmanship, maps, drawings, minerals, &c., with other schools.

School examinations. Their object, and the different modes of conducting them.

School celebrations, festivals, and excursions.

The daily preparation which a teacher should make for school.

Circumstances which make a teacher happy in his work.
Requisites for success in teaching.

Causes of failure in teaching.

Course to be pursued in organizing a new school.

Course to be pursued in admitting new scholars.
Making an order of exercises.

Making a code of rules.

Keeping registers of attendance and progress.

Duties of the teacher to the parents and to school directors. Opening and closing exercises of a school.

Moral and religious instruction and influences.

Modes of cultivating among children a love of truth, honesty, benevolence, and other virtues.

Modes of preventing lying, swearing, stealing, and other vices.

Modes of securing cleanliness of person, neatness of dress, courtesy of language, and gentleness of manners.

Modes of preserving the school-house and appurtenances from defacement.

Keeping the school-room in proper condition as to tempera

ture and ventilation.

Length of school day.

Length and frequency of recess.

Games to be encouraged or discouraged at recess.

Modes of preventing tardiness.

Causes by which the health of children at school is promoted

or injured.

Modes of establishing the teacher's authority.

Modes of securing the scholars' affections.

Mode of treating refractory children.

Modes of bringing forward dull, backward children.
Modes of preventing whispering.

The use of emulation.

Prizes and rewards.

But we pause. The mere enumeration of such a list, it seems to us, shows of itself, with overwhelming force, how urgent is the necessity that the teacher should have a time and an institution for considering them, and for obtaining in regard to them definite, well settled views. Some of these questions come up for practical decision every day of a teacher's life, and they are of too serious import to be left to the unpremeditated exigencies of the moment of execution. In a Normal School the novice hears these subjects discussed by teachers and professors of learning and experience, and he is made acquainted with the general usage of the most successful members of the profession. He enters upon his important and responsible work, not only fortified with safeguards against mistake, but furnished with a kind of knowledge which reduces to a minimum his chances of failure, and increases to almost a certainty his chances of success.

ART. III.-Indische Alterthumskunde von Christian Lassen, Vol. III. Geschichte des Handels und des Griechisch-Römischen Wissens von Indien u. s. w. 8vo. pp. 1200.

THE peninsula of India is by its position isolated from the rest of Asia. The broad rivers and lofty mountain chains, almost defying transit, by which it is bounded, are formidable obstacles to intercourse. Capable of supporting a vast population, and blessed with exuberant fertility and abundant material resources, it seemed complete within itself; there was no necessity, and there seemed to be no inducement to open communication with the outside world. It has hence developed a civilization peculiar to itself, which has been wholly shaped by internal and domestic causes; and it has entered but little into the broad current of general history.

Still, remarkable as this seclusion is, it has at no time been total. It has both influenced other lands, and been influenced by them to an extent which will well repay examination. Its precious wares have stimulated trade from the earliest periods to the present. Its fertile and salubrious plains have attracted invaders in ancient and in modern times. Its grand natural features, its strange productions, coupled with its mysterious history, and its hoary wonders, have awakened curiosity, and led to investigations, from which science has received some of its most powerful impulses. It has given birth to a religion. which has propagated itself over more than half of Asia. Its extensive literature and subtle philosophy have left their traces on the thought of the world from its fables and romances to the speculations of the schools and the doctrines of the church. Its astronomical and mathematical learning, caught from western lands, received a development greatly beyond anything that antiquity or the middle age could boast elsewhere. It gave the world the arithmetical digits: and had its methods of calculation and their results been sooner known, they would have formed an era in western science and materially accelerated its advance. Its language revolutionized philology, or rather brought it into being; for as now understood it cannot be said to have existed before.