facts to the exercise at the beginning. In the common plan, this interest is reserved until the child has been drilled through learning the letters, and comes to putting them together in words; and even then this interest is brought to bear to a very little extent by most teachers. The learning of words is very commonly made a mere learning of various compounds of letters, and if a child venture to ask a question in regard to the object of which the word spelled is the name, he is apt to be turned off with an answer that gives him the consciousness of having been troublesome and impertinent.

The plan which I have indicated I would have essentially pursued through all the period of childhood. It should be the main business of the school to train the child as an observer. As he grows older, of course the range of his observation should be widened, and the process of generalization on the principle of mental association, of which I have before spoken, should be more and more encouraged, as preparatory to that higher kind of generalization, of which the mind after a few years manifestly becomes capable.

Such a course of education, leading the child to observe the phenomena of the animate and inanimate world, would make him a naturalist. And so it should be. Every child should be made, at home, in the school, and every where, a naturalist in the largest sense of that word. He should not be taken. out of the world of beautiful and interesting things, and shut up to the letters and words of the schoolroom. Things, and not mere signs, should consti

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tute the substantial part of his instruction. should aim to impart to him the spirit of this precept of Hugh Miller: "Learn to make a right use of your eyes; the commonest things are worth looking at; even stones and weeds, and the most familiar animals."

As it is now, no one becomes a naturalist early in life, except in spite of the tendencies of his education. The study of nature is not only not encouraged, but is absolutely discouraged in our educational system. If any one, like Hugh Miller, impelled by the force of a taste that cannot be repressed by the training of the school-room, under-. takes to make a "right use of his eyes," and curiously examines "stones and weeds," he is regarded by the world of spellers, and readers, and grammarians, and cipherers, as a strange genius. But he is pursuing, from an irresistible internal force, the very course that I would have every student encouraged to pursue, in a measure at least, by the external circumstances of his education. The tendencies of his training should be decidedly in this direction.

If the general mode of instruction were to be changed in the manner indicated, what a change would come over the school-room. Education, as already hinted, would have much less of the character of mere drudgery than it has now. Not that there would be any the less labor; but the labor would be made lighter by the interest imparted to it, the interest which always results from the study of facts and phenomena, and never from the

learning of mere words, and technicalities, and classifications. And with this freedom from the weariness which ordinarily attends learning, vastly more would be accomplished with the same amount of mental effort.

To recur to the first exercises of the school-room, as illustrations of the remarks just made. Spelling and reading, ordinarily so tiresome, can have an interest imparted to them, simply by connecting with them the results or ends which they are intended to accomplish. As they are commonly taught, they are almost wholly separated from the facts of which words are the signs, and so the process of learning to read words and sentences is stripped of all interest. I have often had the same pity for the little scholars that are drilled by a strict disciplinarian spelling and reading, that I have felt for the laborers on a treadmill. The peculiarity of this form of punishment is, that the criminal labors on with his unvarying tread without seeing any result come of his labor. The machinery which is turned by the shaft of the treadmill is in another apartment concealed by an intervening wall from the laborers. If that wall could be knocked away, so that they could see the machinery that is moved by their steady, continuous tread, it would be a great relief to the tedium of their labor. So, too, if the wall that separates the treadmill operation of drilling in spelling and reading from the results that are naturally connected with it could be taken away, if the interest of facts could be united with the learning of the words which express them,

- the labor of the school-room would be relieved of its monotonous and wearisome character.

Isaac Taylor, in his excellent work on Home Education says, that he would keep the child from what he terms "book-learning," that is, the teaching peculiar to the school-room, for the first six or even eight years of his life. He would leave him all this time to obey his natural inclinations in observing what is around him. He would leave him to a spontaneous self-education, and would govern or guide his mind only so far as it is necessary in order to keep him from any thing that is injurious. His view is wrong in two respects. 1st. The child should not be left to the spontaneous movements of his mind, but he should be taught in his observation. The child needs to be guided and led here as much as in any other part of his education. And 2d. The teaching of the school, book-learning, as he terms it, should not be so separate as it seems he would have it, from the ordinary teaching by the way and at the fire-side. He would have the observation of childhood go on without any connection with the learning to spell and read. The knowledge of language during this period gained, according to his plan, orally. I would, on the contrary, have the learning of the written lan、guages go on with the teaching of the phenomena of nature. This should be done gradually and incidentally, and not rapidly and by fixed and regular tasks. There is no need of haste in pressing the acquisition of language. Indeed, it will probably be learned more rapidly with this plan of education

must all be

than on the old plan, because it is made to assume its natural position as a means to an end, and is thus relieved of the wearisomeness which attends the learning of it as a thing by itself.

I presume that as I have been making the above remarks, many of the teachers whom I address have been impressed with the thought that there are very few books that are adapted to this plan of early education. This is true. The proper books are yet, for the most part, to be written. And I know not any field of effort which promises so great success, or which calls for the exercise of higher talent. Books of the kind indicated cannot be properly prepared by minds that move in a beaten track. Something more than a copyist or compiler is needed for such a work. Such minds as that of the lamented Gallaudet must be put in requisition. The impression, which is so common, that ordinary minds can make books for children, should be done away. The moulding of the plastic mind of childhood should not be left to unskilful hands. Skill is surely more needed at this first stage than at any succeeding one, and will be more sure to effect the desired results.

The materials for such books as are needed to teach the young in the observation of nature are abundant. The world of matter and mind is full of facts and phenomena that can be made interesting to the young observer. And I may remark in this connection, that if any teacher will undertake to interest her young scholars in regard to common natural objects, although from the want of suitable