TRAINING IN OBSERVATION 293 



When you find yourselves fairly launched into the 

 vortex of life you will look back with infinite satisfaction 

 to the time when you were enabled to lay a broad 

 and solid platform of general acquirement within the 

 walls of this College. 



Perhaps the most remarkable defect in the older 

 or literary methods of education was the neglect of 

 the faculty of observation. For the training of the 

 other mental faculties ample provision was made, but 

 for this, one of the most important of the whole, no 

 care was taken. If a boy was naturally observant, he 

 was left to cultivate the use of his eyes as he best 

 might; if he was not observant, nothing was done to 

 improve him in this respect, unless it were, here and 

 there, by the influence of such an intelligent teacher 

 as is described in Mrs. Barbauld's famous story of 

 Eyes and No Eyes. Even when science began to be 

 introduced into our schools, it was still taught in the 

 old or literary fashion. Lectures and lessons were 

 given by masters who got up their information from 

 books, but had no practical knowledge of the subjects 

 they taught. Class-books were written by men equally 

 destitute of a personal acquaintance with any depart- 

 ment of science. The lessons were learnt by rote, 

 and not infrequently afforded opportunities rather for 

 frolic than for instruction. Happily this state of 

 things, though not quite extinct, is rapidly passing 

 away. Practical tuition is everywhere coming into 

 use, while the old-fashioned cut-and-dry lesson-book 

 is giving way to the laboratory, the field-excursion, 

 and the school-museum. 



It is mainly through the eyes that we gain our 



