We must make much more of American history and literature, and must provide all our youth with instruction in the fundamental principles of morality and Democratic government.

IV. So far as I am able to judge, successive additions must be made to our public school course; and to make this possible and profitable, there must be a revised conception of method. Instruction can be neither a process of discovery nor of rediscovery; but a process which deals principally with capitalized knowledge. This knowledge must be acquired for purposes of use and for purposes of culture, and certain parts of it must be taught with a view to training or discipline. The purpose of the public school is not to train scientists, and I am not able to see that the general study of the sciences can be defended on the ground of their practical value. Their best defence is their contribution to mental breadth. They must be learned, not by a slow, inductive process, but as literature, by expeditious methods. It is only by this general method that we can give the needed breadth to our public school course. In every science there should be typical lessons of the inductive, experimental sort; but in the main, the science that is taught in the public school must be learned as literature.-Intelligence.

Suggestions on Teaching Composition.

1. See that pupils have thoughts to express before they attempt to express them. The first essential is that the child has something to say on the subject selected before he attempts to write.

2. Have your pupils express their thoughts in correct language, and always in such words as they understand.

3. Do not insist that their language shall consist of monosyllables. Monosyllabic language may be strong, but language needs to be beautiful as well as strong. A judicious intermingling of words of various lengths is the most harmonious arrangement as well as the most expressive.

4. Encourage pupils to read and then to reproduce what they have read either in newspapers or in the works of standard authors.

5. Encourage them to refer to the dictionary whenever in doubt as to the correct meaning or the proper application of a word.

6. Ease of expression may be acquired by constant practice, but also by copying and memorizing the productions of the elegant writers in one's own language. We naturally imitate the style of

those writings with which we are most familiar, and their methods of expression to some extent model ours.

7. Encourage them to read the best and most classic authors, to discover, if possible, the essentials which make their style pleasing. Reading literature of a captivating style will tend to give one power to form a pleasing style of one's own.

8. Give occasional exercises in transposing poetry to prose. This will require the learner to remodel many of the sentences and express them in a different form.

9. Exercises in paraphrasing are excellent. Let the pupil take some popular proverb and write an explanation of it.

10. See that pupils do not attempt to select subjects beyond their comprehension. Encourage them to be original by having them write only on such themes as they understand, in having them express themselves naturally, and by giving them proper praise for even their humblest efforts.

11. Encourage your pupils to correct and re-write what they have written, and prune, until they express themselves in the best possible

manner.

12. Lead your pupils to see that composition is only telling or writing what they know or think on any subject.

13. Make your composition exercises interesting by having variety. The teacher is often able to create interest by giving a five-minute exercise; that is, by allowing the pupils five minutes' time to express themselves on a given subject.

14. Let your criticisms be generous. Harsh criticism, particularly in the composition class, tends greatly to discourage the child and disgust him with the exercise.

15. See that the compositions of your pupils are expressions of thought, and not a mere string of meaningless sentences connected by a series of conjunctions.

16. See that their sentences are not ambiguous, and that they do not violate the rules of grammar and rhetoric.

17. Let the writing be exact. Where the wrong word is used call their attention to it, and in this way aid them in discriminating accurately the nicer shades of meaning in words.

18. Teach accurately the meaning of the various classes of sentences, and show pupils the use of paragraphs and how they should begin.

19. Have your pupils write abstracts of stories they have read, also imaginary stories.

20. Give them practice in writing news events for the press, whether they be forwarded to an editor or not.

21. Have them write short scientific articles; this will both give them a review and train them to think and compose with special accuracy.

22. Let them write descriptions of imaginary voyages, in which they can employ their knowledge of geography and history.

23. When pupils in a class are not all required to write on the same theme place a number of suitable subjects on the blackboard and let them select from these.

24. Train them to outline or analyze the topic which they select before they begin to write on it.

25. Encourage them to think over each point in the outline carefully before they attempt to write. This will do more than anything else to lead them to think for themselves.

26. In the preparation of the more extended essays pupils should be trained to observe closely and reflect intently before giving their thoughts expression.

27. In the collection of material, pupils should read also the thoughts of others; these will arouse new thoughts in their own minds and make their writings all the more valuable.

28. The student preparing to write should be encouraged to carry a note-book in which he should jot down such thoughts with reference to his subject as may occur to him from time to time.

29. When once the analysis of the topic has been made, the student should select only those parts which seem most important and dwell on these, but without repetition of either thought or language.

30. Let the teacher by all means cultivate among his pupils a taste for good reading and pure literature. Let him give such culture to his pupils as will create in them a desire to read for themselves what is beautiful and interesting in the writings of others and, having once secured this result, he need have little fear as to their success, not only in the department of language, but in every other department as well.

31. Remember that the daily exercise in written expression of thought is much more valuable than the formal semi-monthly compositions prepared for an occasion.

32. In the correction of compositions it is usually better simply to indicate the error than correct it; by this plan the pupil will be enabled to correct most of his own errors, and when not able to do so it will be time for the teacher to suggest the proper correction.

Some teachers prefer to indicate the sort of correction to be made, whether in spelling, capital letters, or otherwise, but in general it will be found best simply to indicate that an error has been made and let the pupil discover it for himself.

Some of the errors may be written on the board for the class to criticise and correct. When such a plan is pursued the teacher should never be so inconsiderate as to permit any pupil to know from whose compositions the errors have been gleaned. In general, those errors which are likely to be made by all or most of the mem- ' bers of the class should be placed on the board.-Raub's "Methods of Teaching."

Rest or Recreation?

Everybody is off for his holiday, and yet hardly anybody gives any thought to the question what the chief use of a holiday is, and how best this may be secured for himself. Perhaps to the very young it does not much matter. Secure young people a moderate amount of change, and the great elasticity which is in the young is sure to enable them so to assimilate that change as to restore all the energies which are in them, and of course to renew those which were in any sense exhausted. But as men and women get on in life, the question how best to use a holiday so as to restore vividness and elasticity to the energies which have been most exhausted, becomes a very different and much more delicate one. There is perhaps no sadder sight than to see the fruitless attempts made to shovel out amusement among a number of aging people—the inhabitants, for instance, of a number of almshouses. The present writer saw the other day some vans full of poor old men and women discharged at a little inn in a country road without any arrangement having been made to provide for their comfort or amusement. The old men managed to stump about without any sign of enjoyment indeed, but also without much sign of fatigue. There was no evidence that the excursion gave them any pleasure, but there was no evidence that it added to their suffering. But to see the old women sitting down wearily on heaps of stones at the roadside and looking greyer with disappointment in the ill-conceived attempt to give them pleasure than their age and infirmity alone would have made them, was one of the most pitiable sights that can be imagined. The truth is that nothing makes people feel more forlorn than a miscarried attempt to enjoy themselves, and that nothing is easier for those who have passed the elas

tic age than to miscarry in such attempts. Indeed, if you try to provide amusements in the lump for the old, you are almost sure to miscarry. What suits one is very little likely to suit the other, and the old have so little redundant life in them that any attempt to constrain the energy they have into artificial channels is pretty sure to fail. In the case of the old rest is the first condition of recreation, and to fag them with fatiguing efforts to which they are not accustomed is the greatest of mistakes. At the same time, rest, though a considerable part of recreation, is not the whole. Any one who really wishes to get the full benefit of a holiday should remember that it is by no means enough to provide a sufficient store of quiet and peace, though that is essential to recreation. There is something further that is almost essential, and that is some kind of gentle exercise for those powers and energies which, being naturally keen and vivid, have yet had least room for activity in the routine of ordinary life. The strict meaning of re-creating or creating afresh, obviously includes the bringing back of dormant energies into activity, and nothing, we believe, really tends so much to the resting of the energies which have been over-used as the bringing into play of those which have been inactive or suppressed. Nothing is so truly recreation to those whose lot dooms them to hard physical labor as the excitement of some lively mental interest, just as nothing gives so true a recreation to the overstrained mind as a mixture of sympathetic and solitary enjoyments—the delight in seeing others happy mingled with the delight in recovering that part of oneself which is kept out of sight by all hard mental labor.

But what men chiefly forget in their holiday making is that, besides discontinuing their ordinary occupations and substituting for them other occupations which awaken a different class of interests, they should find something for themselves to do which will awaken a new sense of power within them distinct from that which their ordinary vocation awakens. That is the truest new creation or recreation of self which brings into exercise disused powers. The politician who recalls his delight in poetry, perhaps even his own poetic powers; the philanthropist who returns to his special scientific tastes to find them as keen as ever; the scientific man who fills himself with the world of beauty and art; the scholar who revives his theology; the theologian who rubs up his astronomy-all these create themselves anew, so long as they do not undertake anything too fatiguing-in a sense far more genuine than those who simply amuse themselves during the whole time of their holidays. It is the revivification of dormant