150 Circulating Museum for Educational Purposes, ['March, 
to avoid the introduction of objects foreign to the 
group. 
In conclusion, I am constrained to remark that the 
benefit of the whole scheme must rest upon the cheerful co- 
operation of the teachers, and that the circulating museum 
is commenced quite as hopefully in behalf of the teachers 
as in behalf of the children. The field is one which is 
likely to contribute something to cheer the hours and 
brighten the lives of all who are engaged in giving in- 
struction. I do not affirm that the children are already 
taught too much ; but with a confidence, which has never 
swerved, in the wisdom of my old master Pestalozzi, I sug- 
gest to School Boards, high and low, that the teaching is 
out of all proportion in excess of the training, the latter 
being with difficulty weighed in the scales of school exa- 
minations. The objeCt of the circulating museum is not so 
much teaching as training ; not so much the inculcation of 
faCts as the illustration of the happiness to be obtained 
through habits of observation. 
There is a time coming when the unity of Nature, of 
which Evolution is but one imperfeCt aspeCt, shall be assi- 
milated by all cultivated minds ; but at present Science is 
driving enthusiastic love of Nature out of the field. Private 
collections are failing in Liverpool and all around ; and 
teaching is hard, and hardening in its results, except in a 
school of extravagant fancy, in which sober average people 
cannot take their degrees. 
Such is the state of things in which Sir James Paget, only 
the other day, asserted the curative properties of “ Recrea- 
tion by Wonder,” healthy spontaneous admiration, not 
waiting to learn the name of the artist before venturing to 
praise the picture, but free as the breaking of the woods into 
song in the dawn of a spring morning. Scarcity of original 
research, forsooth ? Are there not in Nature countless fields 
for research, original enough for the millions that never have 
a chance to be recreated in them, whether they be the 
teachers or the taught, and reminding us of the promised 
harvest, when both he that soweth and he that reapeth, the 
teacher and the scholar, shall rejoice together. 
