thwarted the desires of their children, and cut short all spontaneous activity with-" You mustn't do so." Whilst, on the contrary, now that happiness is coming to be considered a legitimate aim-now that hours of labour are being shortened and popular recreations provided, parents and teachers are beginning to see that most childish desires may rightly be gratified, that childish sports should be encouraged, and that the tendencies of the growing mind are not altogether so diabolical as was supposed. The age in which mankind thought that trades must be established by bounties and prohibitions, that manufacturers needed their materials, and qualities, and prices to be prescribed, and that the value of money could be determined by law, was an age which unavoidably cherished the notions that a child's mind could be made to order, that all its powers were to be imparted by the schoolmaster, that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was to be put and there built up after its teacher's ideal. In this free-trade era, however, when we are learning that there is much more self-regulation in things than was supposed; that labour, and commerce, and agriculture, and navigation can do better without management than with it; that national governments, to be efficient, must be evolved from within and not imposed from without; we are also beginning to see that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the unfolding mind our artificial forms; but that Psychology also, discloses to us a law of supply and demand, to which, if we would not do harm, we must conform. Thus alike in its oracular dogmatism, in its harsh discipline, in its multiplied restrictions, in its professed asceticism, and in its faith in the devices of men, the old educational regime was akin to the social systems with which it was contemporaneous; and similarly, in the converse of these characteristics our modern modes of culture correspond to our more liberal religious and political institutions.

But there remain further parallelisms to which we have not yet adverted: that, namely, between the processes by which these respective changes have been wrought out, and that between the several states of heterogeneous opinion to which they have led. Some centuries ago there was uniformity of beliefreligious, political, and educational. All men were Romanists, all were Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle, and no one thought of calling in question that grammar-school routine under which all were brought up. The same agency has in each case replaced this uniformity by a constantly increasing diversity. That tendency towards assertion of the individuality, which after contributing to produce the great Protestant move

ment, has since gone on to produce an ever increasing number of sects-that tendency which initiated political parties, and out of the two primary ones has, in these modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which every year adds-that tendency which led to the Baconian rebellion against the schools, and has since originated here and abroad sundry new systems of thought-is a tendency which, in education also, has caused division and the multiplication of methods. As external consequences of the same internal change, these processes have necessarily been more or less simultaneous. The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the change has given birth.

Whilst many will regret this multiplication of schemes of juvenile culture, the catholic observer will discern in it an efficient means of ensuring the ultimate evolution of a rational system. Whatever may be thought of theological dissent, it is clear that dissent in education practically results in facilitating inquiry by the division of labour. Were we in possession of the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous independent seekers carrying out their researches in different directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts-each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts to make known its success-each of them merciless in his criticism, on the rest-there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one of them has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment and failure, be exploded; and by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually be developed and established a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion passes-the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third. They are not sequences in time only; they are sequences in causation. However impatiently, therefore, we may witness the present conflict of educational systems, and however much we may regret its accompanying evils, we must recognise it as a

transition stage needful to be passed through, and beneficent in its ultimate effects.

Meanwhile may we not advantageously take stock of our progress? After fifty years of discussion, experiment, and comparison of results, may we not expect a few steps towards the goal to be already made good? Some old methods must by this time have fallen out of use; some new ones must have become established; and many others must be in process of general abandonment or adoption. Probably we may see in these various changes when put side by side, similar characteristicsmay find in them a common tendency; and so, by inference, may get a clue to the direction in which experience is leading us, and gather hints how we may achieve yet further improvement. Let us then, as a preliminary to a deeper consideration of the matter, glance at the leading contrasts between the education of the past and of the present.

The suppression of every error is commonly followed by a temporary ascendency of the contrary one; and so it happened, that after the ages when physical development alone was aimed at, there came an age when culture of the mind was the sole solicitude-when children had lesson-books put before them at between two and three years old-when school-hours were protracted, and the getting of knowledge was thought the one thing needful. As, further, it commonly happens, that after one of these reactions the next advance is achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist errors, and perceiving that they are opposite sides of one truth; so we are now coming to the conviction that body and mind must both be cared for, and the whole being unfolded. The forcing system has been more or less abandoned, and precocity is discouraged. People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life, is to be a good animal. The best brain is found of little service, if there be not enough vital energy to work it; and hence, to obtain the one by sacrificing the source of the other, is now considered a folly-a folly which the eventual failure of juvenile prodigies constantly illustrates. Thus we are beginning to appreciate the saying, that one secret in education is "to know how wisely to lose time."

The once universal practice of learning by rote, is daily falling more into discredit. All modern authorities condemn the old mechanical way of teaching the alphabet. The multiplication table is now frequently taught experimentally. In the acquirement of languages, the grammar-school plan is being superseded by plans based on the spontaneous process followed by the child in gaining its mother tongue. Describing the methods there used, the "Reports on the Training School at Battersea" say:-" The instruction in the whole preparatory

Methods in course of Abandonment.

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course is chiefly oral, and is illustrated as much as possible by appeals to nature." And so throughout. The rote-system, like other systems of its age, made more of the forms and symbols than of the things symbolized. To repeat the words correctly was everything; to understand their meaning nothing; and thus the spirit was sacrificed to the letter. It is at length perceived, that in this case as in others, such a result is not accidental but necessary that in proportion as there is attention to the signs, there must be inattention to the things signified; or that, as Montaigne long ago said-Sçavoir par cœur n'est pas sçavoir.

Along with rote-teaching, is declining also the nearly allied teaching by rules. The particulars first, and then the generalization, is the new method-a method, as the Battersea School Reports remark, which, though "the reverse of the method usually followed which consists in giving the pupil the rule first," is yet proved by experience to be the right one. Rule-teaching is now condemned as imparting a merely empirical knowledge-as producing an appearance of understanding without the reality. To give the net product of inquiry, without the inquiry that leads to it, is found to be both enervating and inefficient. General truths to be of due and permanent use, must be earned. "Easy come easy go," is a saying as applicable to knowledge as to wealth. Whilst rules, lying isolated in the mind-not joined to its other contents as outgrowths from them are continually forgotten, the principles which those rules express piecemeal, become, when once reached by the understanding, enduring possessions. Whilst the rule-taught youth is at sea when beyond his rules, the youth instructed in principles solves a new case as readily as an old one. Between a mind of rules and a mind of principles, there exists a difference such as that between a confused heap of materials, and the same materials organized into complete whole, with all its parts bound together. Of which types this last has not only the advantage that its constituent parts are better retained, but the much greater advantage, that it forms an efficient agent for further inquiry, for independent thought, for discovery-ends for which the first is utterly useless. Nor let it be supposed that this is a simile only; it is the literal truth. The union of facts into generalizations is the organization of knowledge, whether considered as an objective phenomenon, or a subjective one; and the mental grasp may be measured by the extent to which this organization is carried.

From the substitution of principles for rules, and the necessarily co-ordinate practice-the leaving abstractions untaught until the mind has been familiarized with the facts from which

they are abstracted-has resulted the postponement of some once early studies to a late period. This is exemplified in the abandonment of that intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children. As M. Marcel says:-" It may without hesitation be affirmed, that grammar is not the stepping-stone, but the finishing instrument." As Mr. Wyse argues :-" Grammar and Syntax are a collection of laws and rules. Rules are gathered from practice; they are the results of induction to which we come by long observation and comparison of facts. It is, in fine, the science, the philosophy of language. In following the process of nature, neither individuals nor nations. ever arrive at the science first. A language is spoken, and poetry written, many years before either a grammar or prosody is even thought of. Men did not wait till Aristotle had constructed his logic, to reason." In short, as grammar was made after language, so ought it to be taught after language—an inference which all who recognise the relationship between the evolution of the race and of the individual, will see to be unavoidable.

Of the new practices that have grown up during the decline of the old ones, the most important is the systematic culture of the powers of observation. After long ages of blindness men are at last seeing that the spontaneous activity of the observing faculties in children has a meaning and a use. What was once thought mere purposeless action, or play, or mischief, as the case might be, is now recognised as the process of acquiring a knowledge on which all after-knowledge is to be based. Hence the well-conceived but ill-conducted system of object-lessons. The saying of Bacon, that physics is the mother of the sciences, has come to have a meaning in education. Without an accurate acquaintance with the visible and tangible properties of things our inferences must be erroneous, our operations unsuccessful, and our general conceptions more or less fallacious. "The education of the senses neglected, all after education partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an insufficiency which it is impossible to cure." Indeed, if we consider it, we shall find that exhaustive observation is an element in all great success. It is not to artists, naturalists, and men of science only, that it is needful; it is not only that the skilful physician depends on it for the correctness of his diagnosis, and that to the good engineer it is so important that some years in the workshop are prescribed for him; but we may see that the philosopher also is fundamentally one who observes relationships of things which others had overlooked, and that the poet, too, is one who sees the fine facts in nature which all recognise when pointed out, but did not before remark. Nothing requires more to be insisted on than that vivid and complete impressions are all