this teaching, and adopt the new* education, which promises so much 

 for the development of country children and country life. 



He says : 



"The world is certainly a great and stately volume of natural things 

 and may be, not improperly, styled the hieroglyphics of a letter; but, 

 alas, how very few leaves of it do we seriously turn over! This ought 

 to be the subject of the education of our youth; who, at twenty, when 

 they should be fit for business know little or nothing of it. We are 

 in pain to make them scholars but not men; to talk rather than to 

 know 7 , which is true canting. The first thing obvious to children is 

 what is sensible; and that w r e make no part of their rudiments. We 

 press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain and load them with 

 words and rules to know Grammar and Rhetoric, and a strange 

 tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leav- 

 ing their natural genuis to mechanical, physical or natural knowledge, 

 uncultivated and neglected; which w 7 ould be of exceeding use and 

 pleasure to them through the whole course of their lives. 



"Tobe sure, languages are not to be despised or neglected; but things 

 are still to be preferred. Children had rather be making tools and 

 instruments of play, shaping, drawing, framing, building, etc., than 

 getting some rules of propriety of speech by heart; and these also 

 would follow with more judgment, and less trouble and time. 



"It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and 

 acted according to nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reason- 

 able. Let us begin, therefore, where she begins, go her pace, and 

 close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good 

 naturalists. The creation would not be longer a riddle to us. The 

 heavens, earth and waters, with their respective, various and numer- 

 ous inhabitants, their productions, natures, seasons, sympathies and 

 antipathies, their use, benefit and pleasure, would be better under- 

 stood by us; and an eternal wisdom, power, majesty, and goodness, 

 very conspicuous to us, through these sensible and passing forms; 

 the world wearing the mark of its Maker whose stamp is everywhere 

 visible, and the characters very legible to the children of wisdom. 

 And it would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use 

 of the world, that they were better studied and known in the creation 

 of it. For how could men find the confidence to abuse it, while they 

 should see the great Creator stare them in th,e face, in all and every 

 part thereof? Their ignorance makes them insensible; and to that 

 insensibility may be ascribed their hard usage of several parts of this 

 noble creation; that has the stamp and voice of a Deity everywhere, 

 and in everything, to the observing. 



"It is a pity, therefore, that books have not been composed for 

 youth, by some curious and careful naturalists, and also mechanics, 

 in the Latin tongue, to be used in schools, that they might learn 



