gans of Conscientiousness, and heard the awful yet unfounded self-accusations, amounting to agony and horror, which its deranged and painful action produces, they would perhaps see the folly of attempting to account for such feelings by ascribing them to disordered intellectual perceptions, or erroneous associations. The utter disregard of the statement of Phrenologists, that there is an organ of Conscientiousness, and the persevering efforts to form theories of conscience, without inquiring whether this assertion be true or false, indicates to us that no great development of the organ exists in the brain of the theorist.

In Mr Combe's "System of Phrenology," this subject is discussed more at length. Of all the metaphysicians, Dr Thomas Brown gives the most correct account of conscience.

ARTICLE II.

HINTS ON THE FORMATION AND CONDUCT OF A GENERAL MODEL NORMAL SCHOOL, for training Teachers to supply the Demand of a National System of Popular Education. By Mr SIMPSON.

As the writer has stated, in another place, * what he humbly considers the principles of Normal training, he will confine himself, in the following lines, to a statement, seriatim, of a few practical suggestions.

I. As the teachers to be trained are intended for a system of popular education, it will be sufficient that they are qualified to teach pupils from the age of two to sixteen.

II. That educational term will, of course, be divided into two periods, namely, from two to six, or the infant-school period— and from six to fourteen or sixteen, the advanced or juvenileschool period; and for each of these there ought to be a teacher trained, as schools for each ought to coexist in every parish of the country.

III. At the outset, as the demand for teachers will be immediate and urgent to meet the great multiplication of schools, the teachers, to be admitted for training in the Normal school, must necessarily be of a more mature age, than in future years would be required, or advisable. It is therefore suggested that the Seminants (as they are conveniently called in Prussia), should not, at first, be under twenty nor above twenty-five years of age, and should have received, previously, an average edu

cation.

IV. A Normal school, whether Infant or Juvenile, should be a seminary for ordinary pupils of the appropriate age for such

Necessity of Popular Education as a National Object.

schools; who, in so far as they are concerned, will receive the tuition of the Normal master, as if that were the sole object. This plan, it is thought, has many advantages over that of training the Seminants themselves as pupils.

V. The Seminants will attend separate prelections, to be delivered by the Normal teacher, on the principles of education, the machinery and art of teaching, and the whole economy of a school. They will, at their own hours, improve themselves by reading the books recommended by the Normal teacher, and be exercised by stated examinations on all the subjects of the lectures; the stimulus to zeal and progress will be the earliness and recommendatory terms of their future diploma of qualification, upon which will depend their settlement as teachers.

VI. As affording the best application of the principles of the prelections, the seminants will attend in school, witness the whole management of the young pupils by the Normal teacher, and by turns be exercised in teaching them, and performing scientific experiments, under his direction.

VII. As the young pupils may be 200, and the seminants double the number, a very simple mechanical arrangement will prevent that confusion and distraction, which a multitude of persons on the floor of a school-room, looking on, would necessarily occasion. To obviate this, a Normal school-hall should be adequately large and high, of an oblong form, and seated, like a lecture-theatre, on three sides; leaving the wall at one end free, for diagrams, black board, &c. The seats will rise to within six feet of the ceiling, and the floor will be as large as that of an ordinary school-room, and seated as such for the school pupils. On the ascending benches will sit the Seminants, with their note-books in their hands, in silent and fixed attention to all that is proceeding on the floor. None of them will leave his seat to descend to the floor, without being called by the Normal teacher to exercise, or assist in exercising, the school. By this arrangement, confusion will be avoided; and as every, the minutest, part of the actual training will be repeatedly seen and treasured by the Seminants, uniformity, not only in the matter but the method and manner of teaching, will be attained, and carried to the remotest parts of the country.

VIII. In the Normal Infant school, the Seminants will be trained to the system of Wilderspin; and there are some teachers of infant schools known to the writer, who are well qualified to conduct a Normal Infant school, including the separate prelections to, and examination of, the Seminants. For one Normal Infant school-and it should be the leading one,—we may be at perfect ease, as long as the father of the improved system of infant education, Wilderspin himself, is spared to us. thing more need be said on this branch of Normal teaching.

No

IX. For the successive stages of a Normal Juvenile school, a teacher of great knowledge, readiness and skill in communicating his knowledge to others, arrangement and method, impertur bable temper, great vivacity, untiring activity, and firmness of character, will be required. Every thing depends upon the choice of this first and leading public functionary. Unassisted as the Seminant will be, when afterwards in charge of a remote parish juvenile school, he must, during his period of Normal training, have seen the varied and laborious duty done in the utmost perfection of which it is capable. The education, the total education, of the great majority of his parish, will be expected of him; and it must be impressed upon him, that that education is measured now by a much higher standard than it used to be. It is not reading, writing, and cyphering merely; these are its instruments; it is that real practical knowledge which will fit the pupils for usefulness, success, and happiness in life.

X. The Normal teacher will endeavour to obtain his pupils, of six years of age, from the infant schools; and as the first school must start with pupils of different ages, the more advanced pupils should be recruited from the best existing schools of the place. When the school is organised, and in full operation, the Seminants will commence their attendance; and it is humbly suggested, that the course which they will witness might be nearly the following:

First, The Monitorial machinery, which was partially introduced in the Infant school, will be arranged and practised on a larger and still more systematic plan in the Juvenile. No pains should be spared to train the Seminants to a ready, skilful, and methodical use of this important instrument; for without it a large parish school cannot be conducted by one teacher. It follows, that the Seminants must witness the most perfect order, and ready and cheerful obedience, in the juvenile pupils themselves, to be indissolubly associated in their minds with the very idea of a school.

Second, The Seminants will see all the religious and moral feeling and conduct, and all the refinement, and cleanly and orderly habits, of the Infant school, respected, increased, and practised, in the Juvenile; and never for one moment relaxed, either in the intercourse of the teacher with his pupils, or in that of the pupils with each other, during the whole subsistence of the school. These should constitute the very atmosphere of a school, without which it were better to shut its doors.

Third, They will see a marked attention paid by their Normal instructor to the ventilation of the school-hall; so that, on no account, even for a few minutes, its numerous inmates shall breathe bad air; and the privileges and advantages of ventilation, as lessons, will be much dwelt upon. They will

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see the temperature of the school-room scrupulously attended to, so that the pupils shall never be chilled by cold. They will witness no, constrained postures, either in standing or sitting, no injury to the spine by want of back support in sitting, and no confinement for more than an hour at a time, without exercise in the airing ground, with the benefit of rotatory swings, and other safe gymnastics,the hall, when empty, to be well aired by cross windows. No relaxation in these essentials of phy sical education should be permitted to be witnessed by the Seminants; who, both in their own separate instruction, and through that given to the pupils of the school in their presence, should learn and appreciate all its principles.

Fourth, The Seminants will see the lessons on objects, which were to a certain extent taught at the infant school, according to the Pestalozzian plan as realized by Dr Mayo, resumed and carried on, and made the basis of a great deal of incidental train-> ing-for reading, spelling, grammar, and etymology, together with much collateral useful knowledge, may all be incidentally, and most agreeably, learned while the lessons on objects are going forward. Second, if second, to the monitorial, is the INCIDENTAL system of teaching. Its saving of time and labour is incalculable; and, instead of confusing and mutually obstructing, the subjects, taking their places as nature points out, will aid each other's acquisition. By this method, too, the teacher advances a numerous class of pupils at the same stage of training; which is decidedly preferable to teaching minutely divided classes, as it at once saves labour to the teacher, and stimulates the pu pils.

Fifth, From the best books of useful knowledge of common things, matters, and affairs in life, and from his own stores, which ought to be encyclopedic, the Normal teacher will impart knowledge, always, if possible, by real illustrations, either ori ginal, or in drawings and models, and will interrogate the pupils, and establish a system of mutual interrogation, in this boundless field. Much of this exercise, as already noticed, will be incidental. In such instruction the Normal teacher will refer to the best sources of information for the private studies of the Seminants; and a good book on grammar, parsing, and etymology, will be placed in the hands of the juvenile pupils, besides the books on objects and useful knowledge.

Sixth, Penmanship and arithmetic will be going on at the same time, not only incidentally, but at separate hours for their more accurate exercise.

Seventh, Natural history, as a science, including the elements of geology, may be taught to as large a class as have passed the branches already enumerated; and natural theology will inci-dentally assist and elevate the pursuit. Going on with natural

history, and aiding it incidentally, will be taught geography, by the globe as well as by maps; and the elements of astronomy, both planetary and sidereal: there is nothing in either which a young person of ten or twelve years of age, of ordinary capacity, may not comprehend, relish, and master.

Eighth, Drawing may be incidentally learned and practised, for all the pupils should draw as well as write. Whole classes may be drawing, writing, calculating, &c., under the master's tuition, when he is at the same time superintending other exercises. Monitors will do much here. Simultaneous superintendence of various exercises is an educational accomplishment of great value; and the Seminants cannot be too much impressed with its importance, or too much exercised in it. Ninth, A general outline of Civil History, and, incidentally, the civil economy of our own country, with a view of our rights and duties as citizens; and farther, incidentally, a notion of ranks in society and their foundation, and of the nature of trades and professions, labour, wages, markets, &c.

Tenth, The elements of Chemistry; a lecture, with experiments and illustrations, once a-week; with examinations on, allusions to, and applications of, that science, upon all suitable occasions.

Eleventh, The same with physics and mechanics.

Twelfth, Some practical knowledge of MAN as a physical, moral, and intellectual being. The structure and functions of his body, the conditions of his health, and the faculties and operations of his mind; with the relations of both body and mind to external objects, and the duties thence arising, as a system of natural ethics.

Lastly, An outline of English literature, some practice in composition, and a knowledge of the names and works of British authors, both prose writers and poets.

Languages, other than the vernacular, can form no part of a popular course for a whole school. These, as well the dead as living languages, must be learned by those who choose or need them, by separate or subsequent study. I should recommend subsequent study, as found by experience to do more in a year or two, than earlier tuition in languages achieves in five or

six.

Nothing has been said of revealed religion, from the extreme delicacy and difficulty of prescribing for the treatment of that sacred subject in a manner that shall bring together all sects on a common ground, and from the conviction that a plan for its communication does not properly fall within a statement of the mere organization of a Normal school. The Wilderspin plan of Infant-training includes Scripture knowledge, and a farther prosecution of this in the Juvenile school ought