14 ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 



attachment to the teachers, and other excellent dispositions, are 

 established as the characteristics of the place. Numerous letters 

 from the parents speak, in terms of unbounded gratitude, of the 

 change produced in their children, and of the comfort and pleasure 

 they enjoy in their society when they return from school, instead of 

 the wearisomeness of their former company. Objections to the infant 

 education system, all of which were founded on ignorance of its 

 nature, are now fast disappearing. I have not heard of any objec- 

 tions worth more than enumeration.* The system, it is said, tasks 

 the infant brain before it is consolidated, and will send the preco- 

 cious, more especially, to early graves. I have already given a solemn 

 caution that the infants should never be tasked ; but that all their 

 intellectual exercises should be light amusement, and instruction as 

 an accessory. The objection is reasoning from the abuse against 

 the use of such institutions. Dr. Brigham's work was laid hold of 

 by the opponents of infant schools and by their supporters at one 

 and the same time ; by the former as an instrument wherewith 

 to demolish infant education, by the latter as a guide to regulate 

 and improve them. 



Again, we have from many persons an admission that infant 

 schools suit the labouring classes very well, but that no mother 

 above that rank would or should part with her infant to be trained 

 in a public school. She is the natural guide of the [infant's first 

 feelings, and conductor of its early education. Now what, in most 

 cases, will the mother do } She commits the child, for many more 

 hours than are demanded by the infant school, to a nursery-maid — 

 a creature utterly without education, and often with the very worst 

 habits. Even if the mother kept the child beside herself, the most 

 intelligent and excellent mothers will be the first to admit that 

 they cannot systematically train their own nursery morally. The 

 mother wants the element of numbers, a variety of dispositions. 

 This alone is an answer to the objection which admits of no reply. 

 She cannot give that unremitting and systematic attention which 

 infant education requires ; she must delegate ; and to whom can 

 she do so more beneficially than to the enlightened, mild, and prac- 

 tised conductors of that well-regulated nursery — as it was called by 

 Lord Jeffrey — an infant school; where warmth, air, exercise, health. 



• Dr. Caldwell, in his excellent Thoughts on Physical Education, expresses 

 himself averse to the infant school system. We think, however, that his 

 views on this subject proceed from a want of a practical knowledge of such 

 institutions, and of their aim and objects — Ens. 



