THE STUDY OF CHILD-NATURE. 785. 
THE STUDY OF CHILD-NATURE. 
By E. I. Gower, B.A. 
THERE is a quaint saying among the dalesmen of the North 
of England, “ Gie us a good schoolmaster and nobbut a 
moderate parson ‘Il do,” a saying which, without disrespect 
to the Church, tends to show that the canny auld Cumbrian 
is ahead of his generation in the importance he attaches to 
education in its formation of character. The schoolmaster 
has suffered much in the past at the hands of novelists and 
others, who, no doubt, found an unholy pleasure in meting 
out measure for measure, and paying back some of the debt 
they owed for harsh treatment in the past. We are told of 
Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., that he was very fond 
of outdoor games, and on one occasion, as a bystander re- 
cords, while playing at golf, his schoolmaster standing talk- 
ing to another, the Prince, thinking he had gone aside, lifted 
his club to strike the ball; meantime, one standing by him 
said, “Beware that you hit not Master Newton”; where 
with he, drawing back his hand, said, ‘““ Had I done so I 
had but paid my debts.’’ The world, however, is growing 
saner in its judgment, and is beginning to recognise the 
most obvious fact that the profession of a teacher is a noble 
and responsible one, and unique in its far-reaching and per- 
manent results on the well-being of a nation. The inscrip- 
tion over the door of the public library at Boston furnishes 
a motto worthy to be adopted by every enlightened Govern- 
ment—‘‘ The Commonwealth requires the education of the 
people as a safeguard of liberty and order.” Public opinion 
is being every year more and more roused t9 the necessity 
of a thorough and systematic supervision of the method and 
means of education; and a determination is showing itself 
among the people to refuse to hand over their children at 
the most susceptible period of life to the care of educational 
quacks and empirics. The old type of schoolmaster familiar 
to our fathers*and grandfathers, who, flanked by birch or 
ferrule, sat in splendid isolation frowning portentously on 
benches of cowering pupils, is extinct as the mastodon; and 
‘Nature brings not back the Mastodon, nor we those times.”’ 
As is usual in such reactions, the pendulum hasswung to the 
opposite extreme; and there is to-day a very real and press- 
ing danger of the teacher doing too much for his pupils; of 
his losing sight of the fact which every true: educationalist 
endeavours to keep before him, that it is his duty to train 
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