ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 9 



dren, deface and destroy. In this play-ground— which is in truth 

 the school, the school-room being a mere accessory — the intercourse 

 should be left as free as is consistent with the most careful observ- 

 ance by the teacher, who will watch all the minutest out-breakings 

 of selfishness and passion, or failures in justice, truth, and honesty. 

 Into all such matters, however trifling, the teacher should minute- 

 ly, patiently, and temperately inquire ; distinguish, in the presence 

 of all the school, the right from the wrong, instead of the present 

 practice, in nursery quarrels, to knock together the heads of the 

 combatants, and there finish the matter. By this last rude and in- 

 discriminating practice all moral distinctions are confounded, and 

 the same mode of arranging, or rather deranging, human affairs in 

 after life perpetuated. In the play-ground, where fruit, and flowers, 

 and ornaments are respected by the youngest child, pets — the more 

 helpless the better — should be kept, and gentleness and kindness 

 to animals, with an utter absence of cruelty, practised and enforced. 

 The intellect should be trained by an early and minute exercise 

 of the faculties enumerated above, by observing material objects and 

 their qualities ; in other words, the real, system — the most radi- 

 cal revolution which has yet taken place in intellectual education — 

 should be commenced and be steadily pursued as long as the pupil 

 remains at school. Of the first suggestion of the real system, Pes- 

 talozzi had the glory, for there is no higher term for its merit. 

 Deshaye has made it familiar by his Lessons on Objects, which 

 should be the text-book of every infant-school teacher and every 

 mother of a family. It is divided into seven series, with from 

 fifteen to twenty lessons in each, and conveys a thorough knowledge 

 of material objects in their external features, qualities, and uses, 

 and last, what is for after study, their chemical and mechanical 

 changes. For example, the first lesson is on the aspect and obvious 

 qualities of glass. The substance is put into the pupil's hands, its 

 transparency, brittleness, &c., made evident to him, and these words 

 pronounced, read, and spelled by him as exhibited in printed cards, 

 or written with chalk on a black board. By this means, reading, 

 and ultimately writing, is incidentally and almost insensibly attain- 

 ed. In the second lesson something is exhibited different from 

 glass, though resembling it in one or two qualities : for example, 

 India rubber. It is not brittle, but tough ; not transparent, but 

 opaque, though it is elastic. It is also combustible and odorous ; 

 all which terms are learned as words incidentally ; so that by the 

 time the whole seven series are finished, the child can read. The 

 first four series are enough for the infant school ; the remaining 



VOL. VI. NO. XIX. B 



