We heartily agree with Mrs. Tuckfield in recommending silent, individual, and self-instructing occupations. The only “systems or "methods" of school organization at present generally known and adopted in this country, are the Monitorial, the Simultaneous, and the Mixed.* It does not come within the scope of our present purpose to describe these three systems, or to discuss their respective merits but we are disposed to think that what may be called the Successive Method, will be found to be peculiarly adapted to schools of moderate size, that is, containing not more than from seventy to one hundred children. By the Successive Method, we mean a plan of school organization which will enable the master to instruct all the boys himself; grouping them into classes, and taking each class in succession. But a much more detailed description than we are prepared to give, until we have seen the results of some interesting experiments which we are now superintending, would be necessary to show how very different this method or system is from the three now chiefly in use, and still more necessary to display its peculiar advantages.

Writing-out will be one of the principal exercises, and instruction in language one of the principal objects aimed at. With regard to writing-out, we find the following recommendation in the just-published Report of the Archidiaconal Board of Education in the county of Buckingham, for 1841-2:-"It relieves the master, and gives him an opportunity of bestowing personal attention upon the lower classes. It teaches the children punctuation as well as spelling. It practises them in writing. It makes them acquainted, as regards spelling, with all kinds of words, especially those in common use, as plurals, auxiliaries, &c. which are omitted in the usual spelling-books. And it may perhaps instruct them, indirectly, in the composition of sentences. The subject-matter, moreover, is fixed by this method on the memories of the children. And the school is more quiet than when viva voce spelling is proceeding." With regard to instruction in language, Mrs. Tuckfield says:

"If once you succeed in giving children some pretty good knowledge of the meaning of words, it is astonishing how much miscellaneous information they will acquire by themselves. The very limited vocabulary of the children of the poor, and of the middle classes, and their vague ideas of the very words they know and use, are the greatest impediments to improvement. .... . . . It is certainly of the first importance to give the habit of never using a word without being able to attach a precise meaning to it. The importance of such a habit to intellectual progress is evident; but perhaps its tendency, in a moral point of view, has not been sufficiently observed upon. It seems to me that there are numberless ill effects on the human character, arising from the use of vague, undefined terms: that it engenders self-deception and presumption; that it undermines an early love of, and all aptitude for accurate research. On the other hand, the habit of attaching clear ideas to every expression, seems to me to engender a taste for truth, a taste for research, and an experimental convic

See Minutes of Committee of Council on Education, 1839-40.

tion that nothing is satisfactory and delightful but what we can apprehend clearly ourselves, and communicate distinctly to others."-Letters to a Clergyman, pp. 46–48.

The opinions expressed in the concluding sentence require to be guarded; and we shall return to this part of the subject before we conclude.

Miss Taylor's "Help to the Schoolmistress, for Village Teaching," is a pleasing book. Less original in thought, less animated in expression, than Mrs. Tuckfield, Miss Taylor writes with greater steadiness, and has produced a more suitable book for the villageschool teacher. If this book were enriched by the insertion of a few very practical and tolerably minute directions for the internal conduct of a village-school, with a moderate supply of model lessons, and references to further sources of information, sound, cheap, and accessible, it would go far towards supplying a confessed want in country parishes.

The "Hints for School-Keeping," by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, give much more useful information than the size of the tiny volume which contains them would lead the reader to expect. This book would furnish some desirable hints for insertion in the Manual we have just spoken of. The more instructive chapters are those on "Rules for School-Keeping;" "Signs of an Ill-Governed School;" and "Secondary Punishments."

The "Educational Magazine," which stands at the head of our present article, having ceased to issue as a periodical work, may fairly be considered to come within the jurisdiction of a publication like our own. We shall pursue the same course with this as with the other books under review. We shall notice that only which is useful and good; passing over in silence, or only incidentally glancing at whatever we may feel ourselves bound to dissent from; omitting also those passages-as for example, the controversial ones -which have lost their interest; that interest being temporary and accidental.

The frontispiece of this magazine,-an engraving of Westminster Abbey, is symbolical of its meaning and design. The editor has expounded his symbol, and urged the great truth of which it is the outward and visible sign, in a manner well calculated to arrest attention and to impress conviction.

"The affections, the imagination, the understanding of a man, seem wasted and meant for nothing, till he finds that he is a CITIZEN; what it is to be a citizen he knows not till he finds that he is a WORSHIpper. To fit a man for being a citizen, to make him understand the meaning of submission to law and loyalty to a person, and so to prepare him for using those particular powers which he can only exercise freely and happily when these moral habits have been cultivated within him; and to fit him for being a worshipper, to make him understand the meaning of reverence to an

absolute Being, and homage to a Divine Lord, and so to fit him for exercising those highest endowments which belong to him, not as the member of a limited nation, but of a universal commonwealth,-this, and this only, is to EDUCATE."-Educational Magazine, vol. i. pp. 2, 3.

Mr. Maurice rightly insists, that ecclesiastical education is not only the crown and consummation, but the ground and support of all other education ::

"We hold that domestic education will not avail to its grand purpose of calling forth the affections and senses of the child, teaching it the worth of human relationships, and interpreting to it the strange world which is speaking to its eye and ear, unless it be hallowed from first to last by Christian ordinances. The parents who, under any fancy of making their child more sincere and independent, withhold from it a continual and abiding witness that it is dwelling in an invisible, as well as a visible world, do their best to make its whole life hereafter confused and incoherent; to make it either a mere slave of its senses, or else a superstitious trembler at the realities to which it has never become habituated; and have themselves to blame, if it never recognises a father's authority, nor a mother's love.

"We hold that school education will never avail to its great purpose of cultivating in the mind the reverence for government, the sense of order, the feeling of society, or its subordinate purpose of bringing forth all the faculties which exist, where government, order, and society are known; and only there, unless the same ordinances which hallowed the years of infancy preside here also, and teach the school-boy that his present life is connected with the past, and will be connected with the future. We hold that the schoolmaster, who, from any notion of not enforcing upon his boys what they do not understand, and do not relish, or from any wish to accommodate himself to the tastes of his patrons, dispenses with this influence, does his best to cause that the sense of obligation and duty, the feeling of reverence and fealty, the acknowledgment of an order which may not be violated, shall never be awakened in them; that they shall go forth bad mutinous citizens, understanding the meaning of no power but brute force, believing in nothing but individual will, and, as a necessary consequence, regarding all art, science, and cultivation, which do not minister directly to the animal wants, with hatred and contempt.

"And therefore, of course, we hold, that the last and highest education, which is to prepare men, in whatever sphere of life they may be born, for the highest human duty of guiding and cultivating their brethren,-the education of the University or the Training School,-must, above all others, be ecclesiastical. If the teachers of these seminaries do not cause their pupils to understand that the highest faculties with which God has endowed his human creatures are not those which He has conferred upon the few, but those which He has given to all; that the most glorious possession is that inward eye which is open in those, be they peasants or philosophers, who are pure of heart, and content to be little children; we hold, that they are doing their best to send forth proud, selfish, hard-hearted men, who will be the despisers or the tyrants, not the helpers or the teachers of their brethren.

"And yet it is the Christian Church and the Christian ordinances alone, which have enforced and do practically enforce this lesson; which have enabled, and do enable us to feel that every poor man may hold converse with the Infinite Wisdom, because that Wisdom has manifested Himself to the poor, and has sent forth His messengers, above all others, to them." "On this account also, then,-because we maintain the duty of educating all, high and low, rich and poor,-we have chosen a CHURCH as the emblem of our purpose, and the pledge of our principles."-Educational Magazine, vol. i. pp. 3, 4.

Our next extract shall be from a temperate and useful letter, signed "T. C.," on the use of the BIBLE as a class-book in schools.

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"In any contemplated improvement of our national-school system, one of the first subjects requiring attention must be the selection of books to be used in them. It is well known that in many of our schools, the only reading-book is the Bible; either in its integrity, or as abridged by Mrs. Trimmer, or in the various portions of it printed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, as the Miracles' or the 'Parables of our Blessed Lord,' Ostervald's Abridgement,' the Psalms in Monosyllables,' or the Bible Reading-Book.' The feeling which led to the adoption of this practice is very intelligible. The period during which the children of the labouring classes remain at school, was observed to be so very limited, that it was thought that the whole was not too much for acquiring such a minimum of acquaintance with Holy Scripture as is indispensable for every intelligent Christian; nor indeed is it thus far short of what will be required. But we must remember, that the object of education is not so much to teach knowledge or to store the memory, as to form the mind and the heart. The instruction conveyed at school is not in itself an end, but a means to knowledge; and therefore we must trust much more to the formation of a correct taste, and instilling sound principles and a desire for knowledge, than to any definite amount of information which we may succeed in communicating to our pupils. It is very important that both teachers and taught should bear this in mind; for the effects of losing sight of it are manifest, in the utter aversion to reading, which seems to be universal with boys emancipated from the parochial school."-Educational Magazine, vol. i. pp. 111, 112.

The writer then proceeds to show, how by the practice of using the BIBLE as the sole text-book for acquiring or exercising the mere art of reading, the learner, in consequence of the limited range of the phraseology and the subject-matter of the Sacred Volume, seldom acquires a general facility in the art of reading, or a practical acquaintance with the necessary language of ordinary life.

"Viewing education as a means of preparing us to live in the world, and above the world, it will surely have failed in its object, if it does not send out pupils from the school with so much of taste for literary pursuits, as shall qualify them for studying their worldly calling to the best advantage, even as its higher object is to fit the heart for the due performance of its spiritual duties. But if the pupil, on leaving school, finds himself unable to read and to understand matters connected with his trade or business, we can scarcely be surprised to find our schooling, in many instances, thrown away; and the first-class school-boy present himself for Confirmation, after a few years, ignorant almost of his letters."-Educational Magazine, vol. i. p. 112.

The second objection urged by this writer against the habitual use of the BIBLE, as the ordinary reading-book, is a still more forcible one; and we can add our own testimony, as to the irreverence engendered by this well-intentioned but ill-working practice.

"My second objection to the use of the Bible as THE text-book of the school, is, that it is apt to beget a habit of using the sacred volume irreverently. Who can have failed to observe this in our schools? Children toss off a text as if they were saying their multiplication-table, and the material volume is handled with no greater reverence than Murray's Grammar. It may be said, 'These are little things.' True; they are. But

the experience of every thoughtful person will tell them, that the tone of their mind and whole character has been sensibly affected by trifling things, which date back almost to the period of infancy. It is no answer to this objection, that it has been pressed to extravagant conclusions by the enthusiast, even to the exclusion of prayer, or the very mention of GOD, from educational systems. The essential attribute of an enthusiast, is to seize on a portion of truth, and strain it beyond its legitimate application, forgetting those appropriate counter-truths which, in religion and morals, are ever set one over against the other.' Granted, that we can hardly expect to bring a number of children to that serious frame of mind in which the Word of God should be approached; still, if there be any truth in the proverb, which assigns. contempt to be the effect of familiarity, we must be manifestly encouraging that pernicious tendency, when the memory is exercised in a degree beyond that in which the mind is informed. And such must be the case when the same passage of Scripture is read, time after time, as the daily task; and more especially when, as is too often the case, the teacher is not of a capacity to impart, on each occasion, some fresh novelty of illustration or enforcement."-Educational Magazine, vol. i. p. 113.

There is, indeed, no subject of more pressing or painful interest, in connexion with the course and methods of instruction at present pursued in the majority of our national schools, than that irreverent handling of sacred subjects which constitutes-we say it in sorrow, not in anger-one of their prominent characteristics. On this subject we fully agree with Archdeacon Samuel Wilberforce, in the sentiments expressed by him in the Preface to his admirable little book, entitled "Agathos;" in which, as he tells us, his greatest care has been, while interweaving, in his beautiful parables, as much instruction as he could about the Holy Scriptures, to keep as far as possible from all lowering down of holy things, or making the mysteries of the faith common and cheap to childish imaginations. This most dangerous evil infests and poisons many of the current religious books for children: such books, for instance, as "Line upon Line," and "Peep of Day." By such methods of teaching, as well as by the careless, secular repetition even of unexceptionable forms of sound words; and by the mechanical reading, perhaps to a thoughtless or a petulant monitor, of Holy Scripture, we lay the foundation of untold evils; for we accustom the young mind to look curiously, and with levity, on subjects which mortal man must never approach but with humility and adoration. This should be, from the first, the temper carefully wrought into our children's minds, if we would have them approach God with acceptance. To teach them to think boldly of mysteries, in the vain hope of explaining to their childish minds what, in the fulness of the highest understanding, they can never truly comprehend, may make them shrewd and forward questioners, but cannot make them meek and teachable disciples. And whatever tends to secularise religious instruction is pregnant with results equally disastrous.

Mrs. Tuckfield, in her "Education for the People," has some just observations on this subject. "It is not the formal repetition of the Catechism, or of any number of texts of scripture, at certain