indeed, have as good a When you think of the steeps of elementary what you then "took of the languages, or of history? Do you, command of those subjects now as then? perseverance with which you toiled up the knowledge, do you feel as if you were roasting in hunting?" It has almost become a proverb that those who gain the head of college classes, soon afterwards often sink into obscurity. They have spent all their energy on the hunting. They have no more power or skill to apply and enlarge their acquisitions, than had King Solomon's sportsman to roast his hard-earned game. WHAT SHOULD A CHILD READ?-It seems to me that a child should never be made to read what it does not understand, and it will understand but little of which it cannot form to itself a reprsentative image. No matter how polished the style, how brilliant the imagery, or how lucid the argument, if a child does not understand it, his mind suffers a positive injury. Children thus acquire the habit of dissociating thought from reading; a habit, so long as it exists, almost fatal to progress. I have myself a sort of dreamy recollection of the change that came over me, when, somehow or other, I made the discovery that what I read in a book was really the same as if some one had said it to me. I very well remember when, several years older, I used to read in my class Murray's English Reader over and over again, from beginning to end, how perfectly unmeaning to me was every part of it except the "Narrative pieces." I remember how difficult it was to avoid censure in the matter of emphasis, pause, and inflection, when I did not associate a single idea with the words which I uttered. It is, perhaps, on this account that children brought up at home, and left to read whatever they choose, are frequently fonder of reading than those who are obliged to read compulsory lessons in school. It, however, gives me great pleasure to add that, in these respects, our reading books are vastly better than they were when I was a boy. But the error which I would here correct is much more extensive in its practical effects. So far as I see, in the course of instruction marked out for young persons, but little respect is paid to the pro gressive development of the human faculties. A certain amount of time is allotted to education, and the earlier the age within which this period is passed over, the better, and the greater the number of studies that can be crowded into it, the more satisfactory is supposed to be the result. If a pupil can be made to repeat the text-book correctly, it is all that is demanded. Hence we see in the course of study for mere children, subjects which can only be comprehended by the mind at the period of manhood. The result is unhappy. The púpil leaves school, as it is said, thoroughly educated, but utterly disgusted with the studies which he has pursued, and resolved hereafter never to look at them again; a resolution to which he frequently adheres with marvellous pertinacity. But this evil is confined to vo grade of schools. It exists, if I mistake not, in our more advanced seminaries of learning. Many of our pupils are employed in studies which they cannot understand, and in which, of course, they can find no pleasure. I know very well that I read Cicero's Orations ten years before I could understand an oration of Burke. I read Tacitus long before I could comprehend Hume; and Horace when I had no power of appreciating Burns. I had finished my course in rhetoric some years before I had any distinct conception of beauty of style; and long after I had gone through Stewart, I should have been puzzled to distinguish between perception and conception. I presume that now we are doing better, but I should not be surprised if there were found many now studying the Greek tragedies, who can see no beauty in Shakespeare, and poring over the "Oration on the Crown," who would think it a task to read an oration of Webster.-DR. WAYLAND. LIFE'S HAPPIEST PERIOD.-There is no pleasure that I have experienced like a child's midsummer holyday: the time, I mean, when two or three of us used to go away up the brook, and take our dinners with us, and come home at night tired, dirty, happy, scratched beyond recognition, with a great nosegay, three little trout, and one shoe, the other having been used for a boat, till it had gone down with all hands out of sounding. How poor our Derby-days, our Greenwich dinners, our evening parties, where there are plenty of nice girls, after that! Depend upon it, a man never experiences such pleasures or griefs after fourteen as he does before, unless, in some cases, in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to him.CHARLES KINGSLEY. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. THIRTY thousand clergymen, from as many pulpits, advocate the claims of the conscience and the soul. A hundred thousand teachers are busied throughout the length and breadth of the land in training the intellect, while a man could almost count on his fingers the number of those engaged in training the body. The intellectual training which the masses receive, is the highest glory of American education. If I wanted a stranger to believe that the Millennium was not far off, I would take him to some of those grand Ward Schools in New York, where able heads are trained by the thousand. When I myself entered them, I was literally astonished. When I looked at the teachers who instructed that throng of young souls, I could not help saying to myself, Ah! dear friends, it would do you good to know what I feel just now. I can feel the very blessing of God descending on your labors, just as if I could see it with mine eyes. What piety has been at work, here, in the construction of this colossal system of education! What inspired energy was needed to work it out! What charity is necessary to carry it on! Many a teacher saw I there, unknown, may-be, to all the world, carrying on her work with noble zeal and earnestness, to whom the quick young brains around bore abundant testimony. When I saw them, I blessed them in my heart, I magnified mine office, and said to myself, I, too, am a teacher. I spent four or five days doing little else than going through these truly wonderful schools. I stayed more than three hours in one of them, wondering at all I saw, admiring the stately order, the unbroken discipline of the whole arrangements, and the wonderful quickness and intelligence of the scholars. That same evening I went to see a friend, whose daughter, a child of thirteen, was at one of the ward schools. I examined her in algebra, and found that the little girl of thirteen could hold her own with many of a larger growth. Did she go to school to-day? asked I. No, was the answer, she has not been for some time, as she was beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine, so now she goes regularly to a gymnastic doctor. I almost feel ashamed to criticize such noble institutions as the schools of New York; but truth compels me to do this. Hitherto, nothing whatever has been done to train the bodies of the tens of thousands who are educated there. All that is done is, excellent, is wonderful, but fearful drawbacks come into play, in the shape of physical weakness, and positive mal-formation of body. The only remedy which can be devised, I think, in a crowded city like New York, where it is impossible to get open ground, is to have large gymnasiums attached to every ward school, and daily exercise therein should form an essential part of the education there. The importance of this to New York cannot be estimated, and I heard with joy, that a gymnasium was established in at least one of the ward schools, and I found out that the teachers of others were alive to this most crying need. I read too, with very great pleasure, that a Mr. Sedgwick of New York was appointed to deliver a lecture on the importance of physical education, at the next meeting of the Teachers Association, in the State; and indeed every one begins to feel that something must be done, and that quickly. Miss Beecher's book enlightened most people on this subject, and reform is already inaugurated. It is well that it is so, or the race would dwindle away before our very eyes. Listen to some serio-comic verse upon this subject, taken out of your Lecturer's portfolio. It is an address to America, dictated by an ancient sage :— "Oh! latest born of time, the wise man said, Fair they may be, but fragile more than fair; They know not, doom'd ones, that the air of heaven, ' For breathing purposes to man was given; They know not half the things which life requires, But melt their lives away where stoves and fires, And exercise take vengance on the fair. Ah! one by one I see them fade and fall, Both old and young, fair, dark or short or tall, Till one stupendous ruin wraps them all.' One can sometimes, in a smiling way, give utterance to truths which seem hard and stern when spoken in grim earnest. Let us see whether we cannot find some allegory to represent what we mean. Some time ago, I read a tale which related that a certain gentleman was, once on a time, digging a deep hole in his garden. He had, as I myself had in my younger days, a perfect passion for digging holes, for the mere pleasure of doing it; but the hole which he was now digging was by far the deepest which he had ever attempted. At last he became perfectly fascinated, carried away by his pursuit, and actually had his dinner let down to him by a bucket. Well, he dug on late and early, when just as he was plunging in his spade, with great energy for a new dig, he penetrated right through, and fell down, down to the centre of the earth. To his astohishment he landed upon the top of a coach which was passing at the time, and soon found himself perfectly at home, and began to enter into conversation with the passenger opposite to him, a very gentlemanly looking man enveloped entirely in a black cloak. He soon found out that the country into which his lot had fallen was a very strange one. Its peculiarities were thus stated by his gentlemanly fellow-passenger. "Ours, Sir," said he, "is called the country of Skitzlanders. All the Skitzlanders are born with all their limbs and features perfect; but when they arrive at a certain age, all their limbs and features which have not been used drop off, leaving only the bones behind. It is rather dark this evening, or you would have seen this more plainly. Look forward there at our coachman, he consists simply of a stomach and hands, these being the only things he has ever used. These two whom you see chatting together are brothers in misfortune; one is a clergyman, the other a lawyer; they have neither of them got any legs at all, though each of them possesses a finely developed understanding; and you connot help remarking what a massive jaw the lawyer has got. Yonder is Mr. the celebrated millionaire, he is just raising his hat; you see he has lost all the top part of his head, indeed he has little of his head left, except the bump of acquisitiveness and the faculty of arithmetical calculation. There are two ladies, members of the fashion |