NATIONAL NECESSITIES AND EDUCATION. 453 



America, they have had appointed tests for the proof of color- sight, so 

 that it may be determined, when a man applies for duties in which 

 color-sights are required, whether he can distinguish color. If our 

 design were in operation, no scholar would leave a school without 

 being made fully acquainted with his particular failure or capacity for 

 this and such like occupations. 



5. We propose, finally, to use the time that we wish to extract 

 from book-learning, in some, and indeed in a free degree, in the cul- 

 tivation of certain of the more refined and pleasure-building arts. 

 First among these we would place music, as the primitive of recrea- 

 tive pleasures. We observe that our children are well and happy 

 when they can sing ; we see men and women gathered together, and 

 find the height of mirth and happiness when somebody gives a song 

 or a tune. In the most refined society, music is the joy of life ; in the 

 lowest dens, men, hardly above animals, when they meet to be amused, 

 sing. It may be that in all these positions the music is very bad, but 

 it is there, and it extends through creation. Here, therefore, is the 

 first recreation to be scientifically studied. Make a nation, we say, 

 a musical nation, and think how you have harmonized it, socially, 

 morally, healthfully. "We can not begin to teach this recreation too 

 early or too soundly. 



We ought to begin by making the learning of notes in succession 

 the scale of musical chords coincident with the learning of the 

 alphabet. Xext, the intervals should be taught, in a simple but care- 

 ful way, so that melody may be acquired, and the art of sight-singing 

 attained. From this elementary basis should follow the simplest forms 

 of time, after which a plain melody could be read with as much ease 

 as the reading of the first story-book. Simple part-songs, leading to 

 endless delight, would succeed in exercise ; and a true and natural 

 language in sweet sounds would be the property, in one generation, of 

 all the nation. In addition to music, we would, as a matter of course, 

 introduce other pleasant recreations, such as dancing, gymnastics, and 

 all those museular games and exercises which, by discharging naturally 

 the nervous force, relieve the mind of mischievous intents and provo- 

 catives to destructive habits. 



This is the programme we would put before the nation, in respect 

 to the grand revolution we consider necessary, of placing national 

 education on the basis of national necessities. Should it be urged that 

 what we- propose is too essentially physical or muscular, we answer 

 that all education is, in the strict sense, physical and even muscular. 

 Speech is muscular, expression is muscular, writing is muscular, com- 

 position is muscular, as much as mental. It is as purely a muscular 

 act to decline a Greek verb as to walk across a tight-rope ; only that 

 the muscular movement, hardly so refined, is more obscure. We meet 

 two men, one of whom is seen to move with ease and grace, the other 

 with dullness and weight. We say, how accomplished the one, how un- 



