l8 THE SCHOOL GARDEN 



and a convenient interior united ; and when space and 

 neatness, and an abundance of light and air are added, 

 it will be made the dearest resort of youth. 



Great and difficult in our day is the task of the public 

 school. The requisition is to educate well-instructed, 

 thinking men ; minds prepared for the exigencies of 

 life ; self-governing men, possessing sentiments of duty 

 and honor, love of their fellow-men, and the power of 

 self sacrifice in short, characters useful to the com- 

 munity. 



How can the school reach this ideal ? 



In the cities of Austria there is at present no child 

 that does not enjoy high instruction, for eight long years, 

 in from five to eight different classes. The teacher, 

 since he has before him only children of the same age, 

 can in this long period of time, if his classes are not 

 overburdened with numbers, attend to the individual 

 needs of each child ; and the child learns from such 

 studies as natural philosophy and geography, so much 

 for the uses of life that he must be incomparably far in 

 advance of the child of the country regions. He then 

 enters a burger schule. This has been the case with the 

 majority of the children in tolerably large cities. So 

 many cultivating and educating elements are offered 

 them in the school, apart from positive branches of 

 knowledge, that the scholars far outstrip the country 

 child in preparation for life by a greater intellectual 

 maturity, capacity for acquisition, and self-reliance. In 

 the city, a good teacher of the upper classes will take 

 time to draw the attention of his pupils to the manifold 

 occupations of men, accompanying them to the work- 

 shops of the tradesmen and the halls of the manufac- 

 turers. In his Wahrhdt und Dichtung, one may read 



