LECTURE IX.

Practical Directions, continued.

8. Mode of Teaching.

1. Regard the subject more than the text book-things more than words.

2. Let it be your object to have every subject of study thoroughly understood by the pupil.

3. Use the most simple modes of illustration.

4. Make every study as pleasant as possible to the pupil. Directions for instruction in Spelling.

Directions for instruction in Reading.

LECTURE X.

Practical Directions, continued. Directions for instruction in Arithmetic. Directions for instruction in Geography. Directions for instruction in English Grammar. Directions for instruction in Writing.

Directions for instruction in History.

LECTURE XI.

Practical Directions, continued.

Instruction in Composition.

Remarks on improving favourable opportunities for making impressions on the minds of pupils, such as natural phenomena, incidents in history, providential events, &c.

LECTURE XII.

Practical Directions, continued.

Remarks on the methods of engaging the attention of pupils to their studies.

Discussion of the question whether emulation and ambition should be used as stimulants to study.

On the means to be employed for stimulating the exertions of pupils.

1. Present the importance of knowledge and mental improvement as qualifications for respectability, usefulness, and happiness in future life.

2. Approbation of friends and instructers.

3. Love of learning for its own sake.

4. Moral obligations.

LECTURE XIII.

Practical Directions designed particularly for the use of female instructers.

It will at once be seen that the subjects discussed by Mr Hall are of the most interesting and practical nature; and it is

but justice to him to say that the above abstract presents but a meagre account of the rich variety of useful and practical matter contained in his lectures. We shall embrace an early opportunity, after the work is published, of reviewing it and presenting such extracts as will furnish a fair specimen of the author's style and manner of discussing these highly interesting subjects.

ART. VII.-A New System of Geography, Ancient and Modern, for the Use of Schools, accompanied with an Atlas, adapted to the Work. By Jedidiah Morse, D. D. and Sidney Edwards Morse, A. M. Twenty Sixth Edition. Boston. Richardson & Lord. 1828. 12mo. pp. 323.

Ir may seem to be rather a late hour for us to take up the review of Morse's Geography; and we should deem some apology necessary for having neglected it so long, did we not know that our readers are aware of the necessity we have hitherto been under of bringing forward what was new and unknown, instead of following in the track of public opinion and adding our sanction to what had been long known and approved. Our notices of new works have been so full and particular that we are now at leisure to examine some of their predecessors; and we feel that it is but justice to begin with one of our earliest and most successful authors in the department of school books.

We consider Doctor Morse and his coadjutor in the present work as advancing two distinct and well founded claims to public patronage. In the first place, Doctor Morse was emphatically and truly the Father of American Geography; and in the second place, he has kept up with the age in the progress of improvement. Not that he and his coadjutor have copied the improvements of others in our country; for it appears that the latter distinctly claims the merit of originating independently the system of general and comparative views, used by Mr Woodbridge and Mrs Willard, without denying them the same merit; and the interrogative system of Gay and Goldsmith was promptly adopted as soon as their works became known here.

"The general and comparative views," says the junior editor, in his preface to the twenty sixth edition, form only one feature of our improvement. The whole plan embraces three things. 1. Outline views of the globe and its grand divisions. 2. Connected descriptions in detail of the different countries or parts of each outline. And 3. Recapitulatory or general and comparative views. This is the plan which the mind requires in order to the easy performance of its task.-After having described very briefly the shape and size of the earth, and its relations to other parts of the universe, the pupil should be presented with a brief outline of the surface of the whole globe; consisting of little else than the names and relative position of its oceans, continents, and grand divisions. He is then prepared to commence immediately the study of some one of these divisions-North America, for example and here, he should be presented with another outline, exhibiting the prominent features of the country, such as the mountain ranges, the great river lines, the principal bays and gulfs, the long chain of lakes, &c., in describing all which, care should be taken to introduce no names which will not be immediately intelligible to the pupil. Such a view will prepare him to come with advantage to the study of the descriptions of particular countries, and any further introduction to these descriptions, we conceive to be entirely unnecessary. The plan of beginning elementary treatises of geography, with general views of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms, of the various races of men, degrees of civilization of different nations, &c. we conceive, is wholly wrong, because, in giving such views, there is a constant use of the names of countries, people, and places, with which the pupil has not yet been made acquainted. The object of every introductory view, in an elementary treatise, should be to make the succeeding parts of the work more intelligible. It is, therefore, highly improper to insert here what cannot be understood, till the pupil has arrived at the close of the volume.

The same observations apply to the second head of our plan -the descriptions in detail of different countries.-Here also, there is an order to be observed, there is a connexion and dependence of the various heads, which make it proper that they should follow each other in a particular succession. This has been heretofore much neglected by all geographical writers. Towns, rivers, mountains, canals, &c. are thrown together without any reference to the proper order of description, and thus the student is compelled to go over the account again and again, before he can get a connected view of the whole country. We have endeavoured to avoid this error. For example, in the account of Spain, p. 196, after naming the boundaries, divisions, and capes, we give a connected view of the great mountain ranges, showing how they all spring from the Pyrenees, and diverge into different parts

of the peninsula. The rivers are described after the mountains and in reference to them, because the course in which they run is determined by the ridges, each great river draining the country between two of the mountain ranges. Cities come after rivers, because in describing the position of some of the cities, we have occasion to name the rivers on which they stand. Thus, instead of a mass of names and things, having no perceptible connexion with each other, the pupil finds that he can put them together in a regular series, and often that he can reason from one to the other. Thus natural associations are formed, which aid the memory, and the acquisition of knowledge in this way becomes easy and delightful.'

The method here presented of conveying a notion of the general features of a country is excellent; and the plan of examining pupils in outline maps, by way of general review, will be found to furnish an admirable means of testing their proficiency.

One of the worst difficulties for pupils in the study of geography arises from the dry, uninteresting manner in which the facts are recorded in the text books, and from the continual repetitions which are permitted to occur in them. From these defects the present work is remarkably free; the style is easy and unaffected; and wherever it can be done with propriety the names of places are connected with some striking historical association, or some interesting fact in natural history. Care is taken, moreover, that the same description should not be applied to a thousand different towns. The instructer who has ever used a text book of a different character will know how to appreciate these points of excellence.

On the whole, whether we consider the number of improvements embraced in the present work, the amount of information contained in it, the ease and purity of its style, or the neatness and accuracy of its execution both in the text and the inaps, we must assign it a high rank among school geographies; nor do we intend any disparagement to its numerous competitors, when we say that, although with reference to some particular points it may be excelled by one or more, yet considered with regard to its various improvements taken collectively, it is inferior to none of them. It is this general excellence which has enabled Morse's Geography to maintain its ground amidst a host of new competitors in an age of novelty and change, and which will continue to secure it an extensive circulation wherever books are tried on their own merits.

ART. VIII.-The Mercantile Arithmetic, adapted to the Commerce of the United States, in its Domestic and Foreign Relations. With an Appendix containing Practical Systems of Mensuration, Guaging, and Book-keeping. A New Edition, revised and improved. By Michael Walsh. Boston. Richardson & Lord. 1828. 12mo. pp. 416.

WALSH'S Arithmetic is one of those time-honored works whose fame rests upon their every day utility. It is found not only in the school-room, but in the compting.house, and the ship's cabin. The lad, who has used it at school, retains it in after life, and refers to it as an undoubted authority in the transactions of commerce, and the young adventurer who goes to seek his fortune in foreign lands, puts his Walsh in his chest to serve at once as a guide to the money transactions of other countries, and a memento of home and the laughing days of school-boy happiness.

In the present improved edition, Mr Walsh has introduced several important additions, as appears by his title-page, but has not availed himself of Pestalozzi's system of mental arithmetic. This is as it should be. He thus yields the place of a first book in numbers, to those books which furnish instruction on the new system, and reserves to his own work the place which it will long continue to occupy, that of a sequel to mental arithmetic and practical preparation for the compting-house.

The merchants have complained loudly that boys who were sent into their service, after having studied arithmetic, algebra, geometry, &c., on the purely scientific and philosophical plan, without having been exercised freely on practical questions, had come to their business utterly unprepared, and were tinually making blunders in the most common details of trade; while those who had gone laboriously and faithfully through Walsh, were completely au fait-up to the active transactions

of commerce.

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We can readily believe this. It is no more than a commentary on the old adage that, 'practice makes perfect.' A youth who has satisfied himself with learning the philosophy of arithmetic and applying its principles just enough to determine their abstract truth, cannot so readily become an expert salesman and accomptant, as one who has patiently wrought out a complete series of practical questions. Still we say, let the philosophy of arithmetic be carefully studied; let the boy be