ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 16 



safety, are all in better hands than they can be at home.* I would 

 advise the formation of an infant school of the middle and higher 

 classes in each neighbourhood, to which the children may easily be 

 sent and sent for, while their nurse's hands would be liberated for 

 some hours for other avocations. To this course things will come 

 when prejudice gives way, because it will then be seen that they 

 must. 



At six years old the pupil will join the juvenile school, and 

 remain for the rest of the period of elementary education, namely, 

 till fourteen at least, and a year or two longer if convenient or ne- 

 cessary. Here the real system, and the verbal incidentally, will be 

 continued ; all instrumentary branches will be taught ; useful 

 knowledge fitting for life inculcated ; and the elements of science 

 practically acquired. The sum total of elementary education during 

 this period is so admirably concentrated in the prospectus of the 

 educational course of bookst now in course of preparation by those 

 benefactors of their species the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, 

 that I cannot do better than extract the following passage from that 

 document : — 



" 1. Reading, at least in his own tongue; 2. writing; 3. arith- 

 metic; and 4. grammar, etymology, and composition. That he 

 may enter life with a mind informed respecting that Creation of 

 which he is a part, and that society of which he is a member, and 

 qualified as well as may be to perform the part which will fall to 

 his lot, he must be acquainted with at least the elements of the fol- 

 lowing kinds of knowledge : 1. Geography, or the surface of the 

 earth ; 2 Geology, or the structure of the earth ; 3. Botany, or 

 the vegetable productions of the earth ; 4. Zoology, or the animals 

 of the earth ; 5. Meteorology, the phenomena of the atmosphere : 

 6. Chemistry, the composition of the substances of the material 

 world, and the changes which are produced by the action of these 

 substances upon each other ; 7« Natural Philosophy, the mechanical 

 powers and relations of the material world; 8. Geometry, the sci- 



• We fear that, at present, many mothers who admitted the truth of this 

 would be unwilling to part with their darlings out of their house, just at the 

 time when their maternal feelings— phrenologically, Philoprogenitiveness — 

 experience the most intense gratification in nursing, perhaps spoiling, their 

 beloved offspring — Ens. 



•\ Seven numbers are already published, and the demand for them has 

 been very great. They are — Infant Education, Introduction to the Sciences, 

 Rudiments of Chemistry, Elements of Plane Geometry, English Language and 

 Literature, History of Britain and Ireland, Elements ofDraiving and Perspective. 



