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encyclopedia in a right line, instead of in a circle, and that we have provided only for the education of the knowing faculties, without providing for the education of the powers of expression and action, and of the feelings and sentiments.

Let the teacher, who is really desirous of knowing the true plan of education, remember that the body and its organs need training and care for their preservation and full development; that the sentiments and passions need to be judiciously called into play, and guided in their direction; that, above all, promptness and efficiency of action, and perseverance of purpose, are to be cultivated with great care, under a consecration to the love of God, and charity to men. In our scheme of studies we are showing what we consider the natural order of intellectual growth, and the following of this order will simply give the best opportunities for the other kinds of education. Thus intellectually we place the cultivation of the powers of observation first in the scale, preceding that of the inventive and of the reasoning powers. This intellectual order of nature gives the opportunity, in physical education, of keeping the young child out of doors, rambling, under the guidance of its teacher, by the roadside, or over the pastures, to the benefit of its body as much as of its mind. The same intellectual order gives, in moral education, the opportunity for developing pure tastes, the love of natural beauty, and affording social pleasures of a higher character than in the ordinary plays of the school-yard. gives also the best opportunity for impressing the young heart with the infinite wisdom and love manifested in the creation; and the freedom of the walk allows the opportunity for the child to manifest its own choice and will in showing kindness to its playmates according to the command of the Heavenly Father. In like manner, the whole arrangement of the intellectual problems placed before the human spirit would be found, if we understood it in its natural order, to be adapted for the appropriate furtherance, at the proper age, of each part of physical, moral, and religious education.

The complaint which has been made, that an intellectual education is of no moral benefit, but rather a moral injury, so far as it is well grounded, is grounded as much upon the fact that our intellectual drilling has been inverted in its order, crippling rather than cultivating the powers of observation, as upon the fact that the attention given to intellectual education has withdrawn the attention from moral training. This idea appears to have been one of the moving springs in the heart of the late lamented Josiah Holbrook. In like manner, the injury done to the bodily health of children, by overstudy, comes as much from the unnatural inversion of studies, the

THE TRUE ORDER OF STUDIES.

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giving of that which is abstract before that which is concrete, as from the absolute amount of time spent by the children in close attention to the subjects set before them. Whatever be the amount of knowledge acquired in a given time, the ease of its acquisition will, evidently, be partly proportional to the lucidness and naturalness of the order in which it was acquired. The purely intellectual question of the true order of studies is, therefore, intimately connected, in more than one mode, with the question of moral and physical training, with the whole question of the highest welfare of the individual and of the family, the state, and the church.

Nor, in either physical, intellectual, moral or religious education, should we forget the artistic side; that is to say, we must remember that skill in expression or action is as desirable as simple power. A man not only needs power, but needs it under control, else it loses its worth. Of how little avail would physical strength and health be to a man who could neither walk well nor swim well, who was at ease neither on the rower's seat nor in the saddle, who could neither drive nor skate, who could neither mow nor dig, but who, in all manly sports and in all useful labors, found himself strong indeed, but clumsy, and inefficient for lack of skill. In like manner, he would feel humbled and awkward indeed, who was conscious of great thoughts, and of deep emotions, and of a strong purpose to do right, and was nevertheless unable to express himself either by spoken or written words, by chisel or pencil, or by musical tones, or by wellplanned and well-timed deeds.

While all studies must be used as means of developing and guiding some power of action and expression, as well as of understanding, it is perhaps the especial function of the historic studies, of trade, art, language and law, to cultivate the powers of expression; and the teacher must remember to apply them in such manner as to produce this end. As the bread of the mind is truth, so the bread of the moral nature is action, or expression, and the pupil must be drawn out into expression, not made the mere recipient of instruction.

To pass to the other point in which we would caution the reader against a misapprehension of our views, it does not follow, because we have arranged the five branches of the hierarchy in a certain logical order, with Mathematics at one end and Theoiogy at the other, that this order is to be followed in arranging successive years of school life. It would better apply to the minutes. The order is that of logical development, that in which the subjects are to be successively unfolded to their fullest extent; but it would be absurd to postpone physical teaching entirely until a full knowledge of mathematics

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had been obtained, and so of any other branches. We may perhaps compare the course of education to the phyllotactic spiral on a twofifths arrangement. The mathematics are the row of leaves on which the zero leaf is to be taken, and you cannot rise to a higher point in your mathematics, except by running round through the other four For the full, harmonious development of the child's mind we need a perpetual recurrence to the five essential branches of inquiry suggested by every sight of nature. The youngest child in the school brings in, perhaps, a dandelion. What is its form, and the number of its rays? These questions belong to mathematics. What is its color, taste and smell, its medicinal effects, its relations to the sunflower and other composite plants?-these are questions of physics. The derivation of its name, dandelion, dents de lion, dens leonis, - from the form of the leaf, and of the generic name, taraxacum, from its medical effect; the fact of its introduction from Europe; the quotation of the lines,

"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold;"—

these would be historical instructions from the same simple flower. Then ask the child to tell you why he likes this flower so much; whether it is because it is prettier than morning-glories, or because it comes so early, or because it is so common, - and you stimulate him, perhaps, to one of his earliest efforts at a psychological self-examination. Finally, speak to him, reverently and warmly, of the goodness of the Heavenly Father, who has spread beauty with so unsparing a hand before us, and tell him of the Saviour's appeal to our conscience, drawn from the beauty of the lily, using simple language that he can understand, and you will have given him theological lessons also.

Now, every lesson in the school of life will lead, as simply as this dandelion has done, to the five great branches of intellectual studies; and no lesson has been fully taught until it has thus been linked into relation with all the main lines of dependent truth. The simplest geometry has its application to physics, its history of discovery and application, its psychological questions of the foundations of belief and the nature of proof, and its theological aspect, in such queries as whether the relations of space are or are not dependent on the constitution of our minds, and thus on the will of the Creator. The cycle of these five branches must be daily recurring, and our aim has been, in these articles, to show in what order the five branches are to be placed, which must always precede the others, which must first receive full development, and which, the crown and glory of the whole, must be always least within the reach of finite faculties.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG TEACHER.

BY GIDEON F. THAYER, A. M.,

PRINCIPAL OF CHAUNCEY HALL SCHOOL, BOSTON, FROM 1828 TO 1856.

[Reprinted from Barnard's American Journal of Education.]

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