SCHOOL-HOUSE GROUNDS. 
237 
and compel that application found needful to the highest educa¬ 
tional results. Now whatever tends to divert the mind from a 
recognition of enforced rules and tasks is so much gained, both 
to the more vigorous action of the mind itself, and to that 
intellectual enjoyment which is the end of all discipline and 
all acquisition. 
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The influence of natural objects in developing a lofty and 
vigorous imagination in the minds of children, may, also, be 
placed among the most positive intellectual results of embel¬ 
lishing the school-house grounds. * * * * 
Before the business of life has thrust its cares upon the mind, 
or its sordid ambitions perverted the simple desires of the soul, 
it is the sacred duty of those who have charge of their educa¬ 
tion to see that this most ennobling faculty of the mind 
receives its full share of nurture and exercise, so that it may 
ever be a source of the highest joy and the means of a wider 
usefulness. 
But this cannot be done without the presence of such objects 
as quicken and multiply intellectual perceptions of beauty, de¬ 
sign, fitness, &c., since it is the office of the imagination to 
gather up, select and combine, out of these, those that complete 
its own ideals of excellence. To attempt to do this would be 
as vain as to undertake to teach the art of speech without the 
aid of vocal utterance; or to instill the emotion of love with 
no object by which it could be awakened. Books cannot be 
depended upon, for though history, poetry, and fiction furnish 
subjects for contemplation, exalted as the imagination itself, 
they are mostly beyond the scope of the undeveloped mind. 
Works of art cannot be had, because too rare and expensive, 
neither would they answer just the purpose, in either character 
or capacity, for children. 
Yet models are just what is needed, and material through 
which may be elaborated, in the studio of the brain, the other¬ 
wise impossible. And where shall we go for such symbols of 
that we would see reproduced and vivified in the youthful 
