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Mrs. Lirriper, Major Jackmann, Doctor Marigold, Agnes Wickfield, Mr. George, and Mr. Brownlow are types of the people with whom Dickens would fill the world-men and women whose hearts were overflowing with true sympathy. Esther Summerson is the best type of perfect sympathy to be met with in literature. She expressed the central principle of Dickens's philosophy regarding sympathy when she said: "When I love a person very tenderly indeed my understanding seems to brighten; my comprehension is quickened when my affection is."

The need of sympathy with childhood was revealed by Dickens most strongly by the cruelty, the coercion, and the harshness of such characters as Squeers, Creakle, Bumble, the Murdstones, Mrs. Gargery, John Willet, Mrs. Pipchin, Mrs. Clennam, and the teachers in The Grinders' school.

Dickens's description of Dr. Blimber's school is the most profound criticism of the cramming system of teaching that was ever written. He treats the same subject also in Hard Times, Christmas Stories, and A Holiday Romance.

The vital importance of a free, rich childhood, the value of the imagination as the basis of intellectual and spiritual development, the folly of the Herbartian psychology relating to the soul, the error of regarding factstoring as the chief aim of education, and the terrible evils resulting from the tyranny of adulthood in dealing with childhood are all treated very ably in Hard Times, the most advanced and most profound of Dickens's works from the standpoint of the educator.

The need of a real childhood, so well expressed in Froebel's maxim, "Let childhood ripen in childhood," is shown also in Nicholas Nickleby, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, Great Expectations, and Edwin Drood.

The true reverence for individual selfhood is shown in Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, and Edwin Drood.

The wisdom of studying the subject of nutrition as

one of the most important subjects connected with the development of children physically, intellectually, and morally, and the meanness or carelessness too frequently shown in feeding children, were taught in Oliver Twist, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Edwin Drood, Christmas Stories, and American Notes.

Play as an essential factor in education is treated in Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and American Notes.

The folly of the old practice of attempting to educate by polishing the surface of the character, of training from without instead of from within, is revealed in Bleak House and Little Dorrit.

Bleak House discusses the contents of children's minds and the need of early experiences to form apperceptive centres of feeling and thought in a comprehensive and suggestive manner.

The need of practising the fundamental law of cooperation and the sharing of responsibilities and duties, as the foundation for the true comprehension of the law of community, is shown in Barnaby Rudge, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit.

The need of child study is suggested in David Copperfield and Bleak House.

The value of joyousness in the development of true, strong character is discussed in Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, and Edwin Drood.

Dickens was one of the first Englishmen to see the need of normal schools to train teachers, and to advocate the abolition of uninspected private schools and the establishment of national schools. He taught these ideals in the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, issued in 1839, so that he very early caught the spirit of Mann and Barnard in America, and saw the wisdom of their efforts to establish schools supported, controlled, and directed by the state.

He says, in his preface to Nicholas Nickleby:

Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard of it by the state as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and miserable or happy men, this class of schools long afforded a notable example. Although any man who had proved his unfitness for any other occupation in life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open a school anywhere; although preparation for the functions he undertook was required in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the world, or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it; in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker; the whole round of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and although schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who might naturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and to flourish in it, these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference, or imbecility of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate persons would have intrusted the board and lodging of a horse or a dog; they formed the worthy corner-stone of a structure which, for absurdity and magnificent high-handed laissez-aller neglect, has rarely been exceeded in the world.

We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualified medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending to heal it. But what about the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been deformed forever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to form them?

I make mention of the race, as of the Yorkshire schoolmasters, in the past tense. Though it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwindling daily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way of education, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities toward the attainment of a good one have been furnished of late years.

This leaves no doubt in regard to the conscious purpose of Dickens in writing with definite educational plans.

Incidentally he discusses every phase of what is called the "new education." He was the first and the greatest English student of Froebel, and his writings gave wings to the profound thought of the greatest philosopher of

childhood. Froebel revealed the truth that feeling is the basis of thought. In harmony with this great psychological principle, it may fairly be claimed that the works of Dickens so fully aroused the heart of the civilized world to the wrongs inflicted on childhood, and the grievous errors committed in training children, as to prepare the minds of all who read his books for the conscious revelation of the imperfections of educational systems and methods, and the imperative need of radical educational reforms.

The intense feeling caused by the writings of Dickens prepared the way for the thought of Froebel. Dickens studied Froebel with great care. He was not merely a student of theoretical principles, but he was a very frequent visitor to the first kindergarten opened in England. Madame Kraus-Boelte, who assisted Madame Rongé in the first kindergarten opened in London, says in a recent letter: "I remember very distinctly the frequent visits made by Mr. Dickens to Madame Rongé's kindergarten. He always appeared to be deeply interested, and would sometimes stay during the whole session."

The description of the schools of the Stepney Union in the Uncommercial Traveller shows how keenly appreciative Dickens was of all true new ideals in educational work. These were charity schools conducted on an excellent system. The pupils worked at industrial occupations half of their school hours, and studied the other half. They were taught music, and the boys had military drill and naval training. They had no corporal punishment in these schools.

Dickens approved most heartily of everything he saw in his frequent visits to the schools of the Stepney Union except the work of one of the younger teachers, who would, in his opinion, have been better "if she had shown more geniality." He commended the industrial work, the military training, the naval training, the music, the discipline without corporal punishment, and the intellectual brightness of the children. He pointed out at some length the difference in interest shown by the pupils

in these schools and by the pupils in the school he himself attended when a boy, and drew the conclusion very definitely that shorter hours of study, with a variety of interesting operations, were much better for the physical and intellectual development of children than long hours spent in monotonous work.

The folly and wrong of trying to make children study beyond the fatigue point was never more clearly pointed out than by Dickens in the description of the school he attended when a boy, given as a contrast to the life and brightness and interest shown in the schools of the Stepney Union:

When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over our books for some hours. I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn't work, when dead languages wouldn't construe, when live languages wouldn't be spoken, when memory wouldn't come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn't go. I can not remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot, beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough. Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves, by any secret oath or other solemn obligation to find the seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious with those members; or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several active bluebottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought them on of our own deliberate act and deed.

It was therefore out of a full heart and an enriched mind that Dickens wrought the wonderful plots into

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