Few masters are so hardy as to assert that they can dispense with punishment entirely, and the favourite modern punishment is the "imposition." Dr. Abercrombie observes, in language somewhat stronger than we should permit ourselves to use, "The practice of setting tasks as punishments cannot be alluded to in terms adequate to its extreme absurdity."

In some few cases, and occasionally, the imposition may be preferable, but generally in the instance of senior boys we think not, for the following reasons. In the first place, these impositions are either exercises of intellect, or memory, or mere mechanical work; which ever they are, they almost invariably take up the time which ought to be left free and open for the preparation of the next regular lesson, thereby inducing very often the necessity for another imposition for the next day, and so on. Again, if the imposition is one which requires thought or memory, it is probable that as much resistance may be offered in this case as to the lesson originally set, and then what is your resource? or, if this opposition is not offered, is it your duty, as a schoolmaster to allow your pupil to make his election of the subjects on which he will, or will not, exercise his intellect, if you were quite sure, (as you ought to have been before you set it,) that the first lesson was quite within his capacity? But this is not often the case. What boys struggle against is the trouble of mental exertion. In nine cases out of ten, especially when the process has become familiar to them, they would rather devote three hours to the mechanical labour of scribbling than one to patient thought, and during the whole of the time thus occupied, the play hours which ought to be giving freshness and spirit for the next day's work are being cruelly and irrationally consumed. The boy plods on indeed, industriously spoiling his handwriting without acute pain, but with a prolonged dull sense of the oppression of his master, and a rapidly accumulating dislike of him, unless he can coax or compel some unfortunate junior boy who can imitate his handwriting, and thus stultify the punishment altogether. Besides, when pupils are numerous, has a master, however industrious he may be, however willing to submit to any drudgery which parents would exact from him rather than that their children should be exposed to any bodily suffering-has a master, we say, actually time properly to examine these impositions, when they are done? He will tell you, if he is candid, that it is frequently impossible.

Confinement and restriction from play are open to the principal objections which we have already made to impositions, and make it at least highly probable that the next lesson will be done still more indifferently than the last. The censure of a master who has great moral influence over his boys, may occasionally produce considerable effect, but even this will for the most part lose its poignancy, when they have once discovered that beyond censure the master will not go; we have known boys even calculate on the time which a long address would deduct from the lesson. Let it be observed that we do not say that these several modes of correction may not be profitably used in certain cases as substitutes for corporal chastisement; and sometimes

* Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers.

interchangeably with it. There are very few dicta on the subject of education, which are to be taken absolutely, and without exception ; but on the whole, we think that moderate corporal punishment is more impressive, more calculated speedily to assert a master's authority, and at the same time, in reality, more merciful than most of the punishments used in its stead.

Now with regard to the legitimacy of corporal chastisement. Some of its opponents talk loftily of prerogatives, and altogether deny that it is a due mode of influencing rational beings. Such an opponent we might question thus: This son, or pupil of yours, has not done, and in effect declines to do, what you bid him; you will not whip him, because he is a rational being; what will you do with him? Why send him to bed without his supper, to be sure. Then is it actually your intention, metaphysician as you are, to deprive him of that portion of bread and butter which you have hitherto considered necessary to complete his natural daily sustenance? You will pinch his appetite, will you? Do you not know that prior to his prerogatives as a rational being, come his claims, his common dues, as an animal, which from you, of all others, he has a right to demand? Well, certainly a boy may be defined a rational animal, and possibly you are right. Let him have three hours by himself in the garret. Infatuated man! and most imperfect metaphysician! is it possible that we hear you aright? Are you not aware that, in right of his rationality, that child is also a social being, and that you are debarring him from contributing his innocent quotum to that community of which he forms a part? Well then, he must write out his column of spelling half-a-dozen times, as he refuses to learn it once. What! change the image of his Maker into a mere copying machine? We see you are embarrassed, and we would willingly relieve you from this embarrassment by simply asking you on what authority it is that you assert that corporal punishment is not adapted to a rational being? Corporal punishment not applicable to rational beings! then, oh most foolish father, must we exclude thee from the class, inasmuch as by the decree of the very sovereign reason it is probable that thou art now suffering castigation, corporal castigation too, for some fault of thy youth. What mean the fervidi ictus of that inflamed great toe? or, if the shoe pinches not there, is there no thistle (certainly not a carduus benedictus) which, donkey-like, thou has swallowed smoothly in thy youth, and which is now returning upon thy palate, with its prickles fiercely reversed. Thee, after a long and mature deliberation-thee, the creature of a most intellectual century, thyself of the mature and dogmatical age of fifty, is nature most severely and distinctly whipping for faults which thou hadst wellnigh forgotten; and that, in the way to others, possibly, of admonition, to thyself simply of penalty. This is no joking; it is real argument, as thou wilt find if thou askest thyself these questions:-Am I a rational being? Is this real bodily pain? Is it administered in consequence of any fault of mine? Who administers it? Struggle against the conclusion as you please, this is the order of the universe. If it appears a foolish ordinance settle the question elsewhere; the dispute is no longer with us, only desist from talking of thy prerogatives as a rational being;

the same hand which gave thee thy rationality, is administering thy punishment.

We are speaking of the question generally, not attempting to define the limits within which human authority may imitate a superior dispensation, though the punishments administered by a wise man, or a wise government, might probably more commend themselves to human shortsightedness, as equitable, and improving to the individual immediately concerned, than the often mysterious dealings of Providence. Many teachers, it must be admitted, are unfortunately very unfit to stand in the place of Providence to children; but it is the duty of parents (a paramount duty which they often neglect to a degree to which they would not show negligence in any other matter in which they were equally interested), to be most careful in their selection of masters, and to send their children only to those men on whose temper and disposition, as well as acquirements, they have some guarantee that they may depend. All masters who use corporal chastisements, are not those frenzied savages, by describing whom Mr. Dickens has succeeded in exciting so much maternal and sisterly sympathy. Many a man of honour, wisdom, and humanity, with a character to lose, has not shrunk from administering corporal castigation when he has thought it would be beneficial.

ON METHODS OF TEACHING.

It is a common remark among the educational writers of Germany and Switzerland that an acquaintance with methods of teaching has been cultivated by the schoolmasters of those countries to a much greater extent than a knowledge of the principles of real education. If this can be said of the German and Swiss schoolmasters, who have devoted more attention to the study of education as a science than those of any other nation, we shall not be surprised to find that the remark applies with still greater force to the new race of teachers, by whom so great an improvement has of late years been effected in the state of the elementary schools of this country. It is true, and none will more readily bear testimony to it than ourselves, that this improvement is in great measure attributable to the employment of the several continental methods of teaching which were introduced into this country under the sanction of the Committee of Council on Education: indeed we may go so far as to say, that we should be much gratified to observe, on the part of teachers, a better appreciation of the assistance afforded them by these methods in the discharge of their duties, and, on the part of all interested in education, a greater disposition to acknowledge the influence they have had towards rendering elementary instruction more rational and consequently more effective. At the same time, we are strongly of opinion that the value of mere methods of teaching has been very much overrated, and that the attention of English schoolmasters has been too exclusively directed to the study of method, to the neglect of more important matters.

We will proceed to exemplify our first assertion in regard to the several methods above alluded to; the second we must leave for a future occasion. After what has been said, we do not fear that our remarks will be understood to be condemnatory of the methods themselves, but of the abuses which have arisen out of them, and which have had the effect of retarding their introduction into our schools.

The aim of the Pestalozzian Arithmetic is to lead children to observe for themselves the properties and relations of numbers, as shown upon the various tables made use of. If the spirit of the method is realized by the master, nothing can be more important than the influence which it has upon his instruction in this subject. It teaches him to base all his explanations upon first principles, instead of condemning his pupils to work from prescribed rules, of which they do not understand the reasons. He thus gives them the power of deducing arithmetical results for themselves, and scope for the exercise of their judgment as well as of their memory. Treated in this common-sense manner, arithmetic is invaluable as a mental discipline; and, from being a dry task, it is rendered an interesting exercise to the children, for the child is always gratified by any instruction that appeals to its reasoning powers. But what shall we say of the manner in which many of our schoolmasters teach the Pestalozzian Arithmetic? We have frequently heard boys made to go through whole lines of the exercises under the care of a monitor or pupil-teacher, until the repetition has become one monotonous singsong not requiring the slightest thought. Is this the way in which Pestalozzi intended his method to be employed? Does it not rather

entirely counteract the end which he had in view, and make the remedy worse than the disease? There was some utility in teaching boys to work by rules, for this did impart a certain amount of skill and rapidity in accounts; but Pestalozzian Arithmetic, in the hands of these teachers, degenerates into the merest and most unprofitable routine.

Of all the new methods, Mulhäuser's Writing is perhaps the one that has been most extensively introduced into our schools, and, at the same time, it is the one that has most strikingly failed. We may go into plenty of schools, and find that black-boards have been ruled for teaching Mulhäuser, but that they are now never used for that purpose. It is undoubtedly a most effective method of teaching beginners the elements of the letters and large-hand writing, and it thus lays the foundation for the acquirement of a good small-hand; but to attempt to teach small-hand itself by this method is unwise, for the component parts of the letters are too minute to be put together piecemeal without disfiguring the writing and impeding the pen. Accordingly, the most that has been done in this way is to impart a slow cramped hand, which, like other evils, when once acquired, is not easily got rid of. In the German-Swiss Cantons, where the method was in use long before Mulhäuser introduced it into the Canton of Geneva, it is never applied to this purpose, although far better suited to the German small-band, which consists chiefly of angular letters (this is not the case with the large-hand, as the opponents of the method have asserted) than to the English or Italian. The English have long been famous for the beauty and rapidity of their penmanship, and we believe that they will still continue to retain their superiority, because this excellency is chiefly

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observable in the class of mercantile clerks and tradesmen, and the only thing that is really well taught, or, at any rate, well learnt, in our middle or commercial schools, is writing, so indispensably necessary to those who attend them, and therefore so strictly required by the parents. But in attempting to afford facilities in our elementary schools for the acquirement of similar skill, we have entirely failed in our object, and, so far from giving our scholars a chance of attaining to an equality in this respect with the children of the middle classes, we have not even brought them to a level with those who preceded them in their own schools, as may be observed by looking at any of the old copy-books. We trust that teachers who have not yet had much experience in teaching the method will not persist in carrying it to excess. It should be sparingly employed, and for the lower classes only. For these, however, it is exceedingly valuable, as it tends to cultivate the perceptive faculties of the children. It is not to be regretted that the method is inapplicable to the rest of the school, for a useful and agreeable exercise is afforded to the pupil-teachers by their having to set the copies. Besides, it is a pleasure to the children to have some good writing in their books, and they make more progress in this way, because they are not disturbed by having to look off at models, and because they have more courage to attempt to imitate the copy they see actually written by their teacher, than one which they know can only be executed by an engraver of unusual excellence.

The intention of the Committee of Council in causing Wilhem's Method of Teaching Singing to be adapted to English use, was to make it available for our elementary schools; but after the lapse of ten years, the number of these schools in which it is taught is still very limited, while its use is almost entirely confined to classes of adults. It is true that this partly proceeds from the inability of school-masters to teach the method, but we think that the chief cause of its having thus been diverted from its more immediate object, is the too rigid manner in which many have attempted to carry it out. The exercises on the intervals are so dry and uninteresting, that children have not patience to go regularly through the whole course of them, and, before they have got to the end of the first part, their dislike often becomes so evident, that it is found advisable to give the method up. This result is best avoided by making the teaching of the method alternate with the singing of school-songs, for instance by taking the method during the first half-hour, and songs during the second. It is desirable, however, that the children should always be supplied with copies of the music which they sing, in order that they may learn, from the first, to connect the sounds with the notes. If taught on this plan, not only will the children take much more interest in the singing lessons, but their taste and memory will be cultivated, and, on this account, they will make more rapid progress in learning to sing at sight. It is a great mistake to suppose that the latter is so entirely the object to be attained, that the singing of any music, but just what is contained in the method, should be deferred until the children are able to learn it from the notes, and that they should be studiously kept away from any musical instrument, for fear they might learn anything by ear. Not the least important aim