artistic violence done to much legend and myth that has embodied the higher instinctive wisdom of the race. To such an inane, gingerbread world has the child who knows cut fingers and stubbed toes, the fire and tempest of his own and grown-up people's experience, been introduced. Because he quails before the darkness, we turn on the lights and always keep them burning.

We would not let loose our critical instincts too savagely (although the self-satisfied aplomb one sometimes meets in high places provokes plainness), but we cannot pass by the linguistic insufficiencies that too frequently mar the work of the Kindergarten teacher. The exactions have been too light. Good grammar has been expected, but not always obtained; ease in story-telling, but not constructive skill; pleasant address, but not always musical intonation, clear enunciation, refined pronunciation. How often one hears story-telling that is clumsy in the choice of words, labored in style, bungling in structure, and disagreeable or inexpressive in vocal effects.

Taking our departure from these general criticisms, we will proceed to develop some of the principles that should govern right practice in these and other matters. These principles apply, not alone in the Kindergarten, but throughout the English course. It stands to reason that, if we believe in the unity and continuity of English work, we shall proceed from

the outset to observe certain counsels of perfection that must be continuously observed in every grade. Our purpose is to state these, as they come into view, for general guidance of the teachers of all grades, and to develop them at those junctures where they have their greatest significance.

The first point, the one to which we have been led by our consideration of the Kindergarten, is the im

portance of feeding the child upon the very best of tes digestive literary food-the very best of its kind, we

mean, and the very best measured by true literary standards. A weighty reason for insisting upon this requirement here is that it is especially difficult to discern excellence in the simpler forms of art. To be simple without being bald is the crowning achievement of art. And that it is a rare attainment to distinguish between real poetry and pretty rhyme, between the song and the jingle, is proved by our collections of poems, songs, and stories for little folks. These are packed with verses and stories that have no artistic merit, — which amounts almost to saying that they have no other kind of merit, certainly no other compensating merit, — for good intention can hardly be regarded as such.

We would urge this point with some warmth. It is not a super-refinement. It must be the prime article of pedagogic faith, in the first as in the last teacher of English, that there is a great, an incalcu

=

lably great, difference in the formative power of good and of poor poetry; a difference that is akin to that between a vulgar or coarse nature and a noble or fine one. Let us recall the feelings and convictions of the Greeks in this matter. Plato shall speakfrom the "Republic" again - through the mouth of Socrates: "Is it, then, Glaucon, on these accounts that we attach such supreme importance to a musical education [music poetry, as well as song], because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses of the soul, and take most powerful hold of it, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured, but if not, the reverse?" (The whole passage should be read: See p. 97 in the Golden Treasury translation.) basis of this conviction is that "good style" in a composition, that is, good rhythm and harmony, is the fruit of a good nature in the composer: "good language, then, and good harmony and grace and good. rhythm all depend upon a good nature, by which I do not mean that silliness which by courtesy we call good-nature, but a mind that is really well and nobly constituted in its moral character."

The

We shall do full justice to these pregnant sentiments of Plato only if we carry to our English work his initial conception of education as nourishment, feeding, a conception that is especially applicable to the young child, who lives so largely by imitation,

who so obviously becomes subdued to what he feeds upon. Instruction in English—as it consists so largely in the communication of those musical and imaginative products which lodge more memorably and fatally in the heart and mind of the child than anything else, and determine his life-long habits of seeing and feeling must be conceived of as a feeding process: it must feed into vigorous life the child's powers of "admiration, hope, and love," to quote Wordsworth's quite Platonic way of putting the matter; those powers of higher admiration, sympathy, sensibility, love, and reverence which, more than his power of thought and knowledge, control his being. We must tempt the eager and undiscriminating appetite of the child only by such pure food as will be readily assimilated by the healthier demands of his nature. Like the climbing plants of the wayside which grasp, now at a weak grass blade, now at a sturdy sapling, the child, too, will snatch at what comes first to hand, indeed seems to prefer the indigestible and gaudy confection to the wholesome diet. Nowhere are the dangers connected with the inadequate conception of education as a "drawing-out" so likely to show themselves as in English work. This conception has in its day done valiant service, as against the earlier conception of education as stuffing-in. But, in relation at least to the humanities, we have overdone the virtue. Some of the things put into

the soil of childhood are not to be drawn out at all; they must blossom of themselves. Others are to be drawn out slowly and cautiously; they must be allowed time and quiet, sun and rain, to grow. We are continually disturbing the seeds we sow; continually fingering the first tender shoots that spring from them, instead of nursing them into strong and expansive growth in the roots below as in the stems. above ground. What we need so much now is a new faith in the slow harvest that will follow the leisurely, quiet, unconscious absorption of all the virtues that are in good literary food. Our later psychology teaches us, as Plato taught so long ago, that the greater results of our education are immeasurable. We must see to it first of all that we feed aright that great subconscious self of instinctive tastes, of swaying loves and hates, desires and aspirations, which is the central self in man.

To this insistence upon the need, first, of selecting the best food for the spiritual sustenance of the child, and, secondly, of not unwisely interfering with the slow digestive processes whereby this food becomes assimilated and converted into power, we may add a caution not to stint its supply. Overfeeding is just as bad as underfeeding; but it has not been our fault under the "drawing-out" régime. Our diet has been too lean; we have starved by monotonous reiteration, and have tried to get out of the