92 



likewise learn the rudiments of natural science, which, in 

 place of taxing the memory hy the extemporary repetition 

 of passages and quotations, with little or no benefit to their 

 intellectual faculties, appeals directly to the senses : hence 

 the utility and advantage of selecting subjects of natural 

 history, which, in place of imposing on their ever sensitive 

 minds a burden or task, associates knowledge with pleasure. 

 In this way the reflective faculties are gradually and 

 instinctively brought into play, without force or compulsion, 

 and the ideas are left to develop themselves gradually, or, 

 as Locke ironically expresses it — " To open the door to the 

 hidden secrets of the mind, that he may look in, and, as it 

 were, to begin an acquaintance, but not to dwell there." 



To develop the solid fabric of the body, which I hold to 

 be of the greatest importance in all our National Schools, 

 confined, as these schools are, to the labouring classes 

 chiefly — to whom, therefore, a good stock of health is more 

 precious than even life itself — the periods of study and 

 confinement should be shortened ; regular and systematic 

 exercises, with other means of recreation, should occupy a 

 portion of the time now spent in ennui and unprofitable 

 acquirements. No person can enter any of our large 

 schools, and witness the languid and listless air so strikingly 

 depicted in the children's features after two or three hours' 

 confinement, without being convinced that rest to them is 

 in reality pain, and motion pleasure, and that the time thus 

 occupied would be far better and more profitably employed 

 if they were left to follow the impulses of nature, in in- 

 dulging to the fullest extent the unrestrained gambols of 

 their ever playful natures ; for it is a great mistake, as a 

 modern writer has remarked,* to conceive that education 

 advances in proportion to the time devoted to it, or to the 



* Art. : " Physical Kduraficn. in the Cyclopedia of Practical 3fedicine," 

 by Dr. Barlox. 



