forethought; seldom prescribing its course, but ever ready to cheer and encourage it to effort; occasionally throwing light on dark and obscure spots, and, when necessary, offering the helping hand. There is, in a word, an education emanating from circumstances and from the mind itself, which, under one or other of the various forms of action and reaction and combination, gives to the human being, without much aid from direct tuition, the elements and, indeed, the substance, of all useful instruction. We do not, we believe, disparage the value of the influence of mind on mind, when we put a liberal confidence in the silent, unobtrusive, and too much neglected instruction, which, although it does not wear the name, accomplishes the best purposes of education. We quote, with much pleasure, the following clear and instructive testimony on this subject.

'Every man may be said to begin his education, or acquisition of knowledge, on the day of his birth. Certain objects repeatedly presented to the infant, are after a time, recognized and distinguished. The number of objects thus known gradually increases, and, from the constitution of the human mind, they are soon associated in the recollection, according to their resemblances or obvious relations. Thus, sweetmeats, toys, articles of dress, &c. soon form distinct classes in the memory and conceptions. At a later age, but still very early, the child distinguishes readily between a stone or mineral mass, a vegetable, and an animal; and thus his mind has already noted the three classes of natural bodies, and has acquired a certain degree of acquaintance with natural history. He also soon understands the phrases a falling body," the force of a moving body,' and has therefore a perception of the great physical laws of gravity and inertia. Having seen sugar dissolved in water, and wax melted round the wick of a burning candle, he has learned some phenomena of chemistry. And having observed the conduct of the domestic animals, and of the persons about him, he has begun his acquaintance with physiology and the science of mind. Lastly, when he has learned to count his fingers and his sugar plums, and to judge of the fairness of a division of a cake between himself and his brothers, he has advanced into arithmetic and geometry. Thus, within a year or two, a child of common sense has made a degree of progress in all the great departments of human science, and, in addition,

has learned to name objects and to express feelings, by the arbitrary sounds of language.'*

A system of education which could be said to be properly adapted to the human being, ought, then, to be founded on the great principles that every infant is already in possession of the faculties and the apparatus required for his instruction, and, that, by a law of his constitution, he uses these to a great extent himself; that the office of instruction is chiefly to facilitate this process of education, and to accompany the child in his progress, rather than to drive or even to lead him. Education conducted on these principles would naturally be divided into three stages; the blending and advancing of which ultimately produce the full effect of instruction. The three principal stages of mental developement are characterized by the means employed these are successively,

Objects and their relations;

Representations of objects, by drawing or painting ;

Representations of objects and their relations, by language, oral

or written.

Education has usually commenced at this last point; the two preceding it being seldom introduced, or neglected till a season comparatively late, unless in the infant schools, and other seminaries, which are taught on the method of Pestalozzi. It is too common for teachers, and, in particular, for mothers, to imagine that the education of a child begins at the moment of attempting to learn the alphabet. A long, interesting, and very useful course of instruction on things and pictures, is thus overlooked; and the neglected pupil begins to pore over his letters, without any assistance derived from a previous discipline of observation on the forms of objects; when, with a great deal of pleasure and profit to himself, he might have acquired the means of distinguishing at sight the different letters, and therefore of remembering and recognizing them with very little trouble. What is done when a child is taught a letter? He has actually, though not nominally, received a lesson in geometry. The letter A, for example, being yet unassociated with one or more sounds in the mind of the little learner, is to him what it actually is when divested of such associations-a diagram. Now, his ability to recognize it,

Arnott's Elements of Physics, a book which we should be happy to think was in the hands of every teacher.

when shown to him a second time, must depend, as far as he is concerned, on one of two things,-a natural clearness and retentiveness of mind, or a facility arising from the habit of discriminating. All children have not the former of these qualifications; but all may become possessed of the latter; and even where the former is enjoyed in a high degree, it will be greatly improved by the latter. A child who begins to learn his alphabet with the advantage of having been thoroughly trained to distinguish objects by their form, commences his lessons with his mind in a high state of preparation for what is to be laid before it. If, further, he has been allowed to look often at pictures, and to tell the objects which they represent, tracing with his eye, or, (if possible,) with his hand, the lines of which they consist; he is brought one step nearer still to the ability to discriminate the forms of letters.

The alphabet, then, when made the first object of attention and observation, is entirely out of place; and the child to which the letters are prescribed for a set of first lessons, is unnaturally and improperly tasked; being required to perform the exercises of a stage of intellectual progress which it has not reached. Talent on the part of the child, and ingenuity on that of the teacher, may, it is true, and do often overcome the difficulty in this case. Nature at work on the one hand, and human skill and kindness on the other, may achieve any thing of which the faculties are capable. But success under such circumstances is far from proving that much more might not be effected under circumstances more propitious to the powers and the discipline of the mind. The ancient method of teaching Latin, was to put into the hands of a boy a book of no inconsiderable size, all written in Latin, and compel him to learn his way through it; and this method made excellent scholars, some of the greatest of which England can boast. But who would appear as an advocate for this method now? Yet there was a time when to remonstrate against this preposterous violence, was treason against the majesty of established usage in education; and the first decided step of departure from this good old way was,-'unheard of innovation!"

Fortunately for the progress of elementary instruction in our day, the study of material objects-of substances and forms, of colour, and weight, and number,-has already found its way into education, in the infant schools,-a convincing experiment in the science and art of tuition, which silences all the objections of narrow theories, by the extent and force of

its results. A familiar course of instruction, adapted to the circumstances of infancy and childhood, was prepared by Pestalozzi in his book for mothers. Parts of this useful work have run through several editions in England; and one or more have been republished in this country.* It would be unnecessary, therefore, to enlarge on this subject, here. The method recommended is in part illustrated in the directions contained in 'Practical Education,' which prescribe blocks of various forms, as playthings for young children; and when carried out, under the care of a mother, would be embodied in familiar conversations about the colour, form, size, weight, number, and uses of objects. The lessons given consist chiefly in examining, by sight and touch, whatever objects are around the child, within doors or without. The intellectual benefit of these exercises is to impart definite, clear, and accurate conceptions, by a natural and salutary discipline of attention and judgment. Moral instruction, as well as healthful exercise and recreation, may be combined with such lessons; or rather, perhaps, may form the chief objects of attention in them.

Another department of interesting and useful instruction, which might be pursued to great extent and with much benefit, before children learn to read, is the use of pictures. These, as has been shown in the infant schools, may serve to furnish a great variety of exercise, finely suited to the capacities of childhood. The number, colours, forms, and proportions of objects, may thus form subjects for the discipline of the senses and the mind; and, by judicious arrangement, may be made helps to the infant faculties, in attempting to discriminate the forms of letters and words. Independently of this last advantage, however, pictures, as representations of visible nature, may be used for instructive lessons on all sorts of objects which children are in the habit of seeing and observing; as plants, animals, scenery, and productions of art in daily use. When human beings are represented, their actions may be made the subjects of moral lessons, by questions and conversation. Religious instruction, as far as the mind is capable of it, may be mingled with all such exercises of the mind. Nature, whether in its animated or inanimate forms, may, in this way, be reproduced, or called up to the thoughts, at any desirable moment, to

* Maternal Instruction, &c. Salem. Whipple & Lawrence. 12mo -reviewed in last No. of this Journal. See p. 53.

bring along with it the idea of its Author, and to cultivate those impressions of his power and goodness for which the unoccupied mind of infancy is ever ready. An agreeable and salutary variety may, by this means, be imparted to instruction, and form the basis of simple ideas about language, as another, and only an arbitrary, species of the representation of things and thoughts. From this step an intelligent parent or teacher will not find it difficult to pass to elementary notions of the mind, which conceives and delineates all forms of representation, as a wondrous and noble production of creative power. By such aid, the infant which repeats the name of the invisible Father, may come to use the word, not altogether without a meaning, and may happily learn to think of God not as a form of the imagination, (which is too commonly the case,) but as a 'spirit.'

The suitableness of pictures for the purposes of instruction we may gather from the eagerness of the child itself to contemplate them. They secure the attention without effort, and they interest the imagination and the heart. They serve to expand, in a silent and natural way, the whole intellectual being. The benevolent Mr. Wilderspin, the agent of the English infant school society, and himself one of the earliest and most successful teachers of an infant school, recommends pictures as a sovereign remedy for all the perturbations and mental ailments of infancy. That kind hearted man used to keep a supply always at hand, ready to be exhibited when any of his pupils seemed disturbed or grieved. By means of these he found he could instantly change the key of the mental mood, and restore the little being to happiness,—a benign substitute, certainly, for the rod, and a fine prelude to the sway of reason and right feeling, at a later stage of character.

But we need not expatiate on topics which are themselves so fruitful of thought. Suffice it to say, that pictures, in the hands of any mother, may be made instructive and useful, long before a child has learned his letters. If the mother has herself enjoyed liberal opportunities of education, she may render pictures an adequate means for teaching the elements of all that a child can learn ; and she may make her lessons from them as systematic as she pleases, and comprehensive enough to embrace the rudiments of all useful knowledge.

Dismissing, for the present, any farther consideration of the first two stages of education,-objects and pictures,-we come