PLAN NO. 4-GROUND PLAN OF AN OCTAGON SCHOOL-HOUSE.-FIG. II. This lobby is to finish eight feet high, the inside wall to show like a screen, and rising to the roof, and the space above be open to the school-room, and used to put away or station school apparatus. This screen-like wall may be hung with hats and clothes, or the triangular space next the window may be inclosed for this purpose. The face of the octagon opposite to the porch, has a wood-house attached to it, serving as a sheltered way to a double privy beyond. This woodhouse is open on two sides, to admit of a cross draught of air, preventing the possibility of a nuisance. Other wing-rooms may be attached to the remaining sides of the octagon, if additional inconveniences for closets, library, or recitation rooms be desired. The mode here suggested of a lantern in the centre of the roof for lighting all common school-houses, is so great a change from common usage in our country, that it requires full and clear explanations for its execution, and plain and satisfactory reasons for its general adoption, and of its great excellence in preference to the common mode. They are as follows, viz. : 1. A skylight is well known to be far better and stronger than light from the sides of the building in cloudy weather, and in morning and evening. The difference is of the greatest importance. In short days (the most used for schools) it is still more so. 2. The light is far better for all kinds of study than side light, from its quiet uniformity and equal distribution. In framing this building, it will be done so that the weather-board 3. For smaller houses the lantern may be square, a simple forming can be put on vertically. The rafters will be twenty inches beeasily constructed. The sides, whether square or octagonal, should incline like the drawing, but not so much as to allow water condensed on its inside to drop off, but run down on the inside to the bottom, which should be so formed as to conduct it out by a small aperture at each bottom pane of glass. 4. The glass required to light a school-room equally well with side lights would be double what would be required here, and the lanterns would be secure from common accidents, by which a great part of the glass is every year broken. 5. The strong propensity which scholars have to look out by a side window would be mostly prevented, as the shutters to side apertures would only be opened when the warm weather would require it for air, but never in cool weather, and therefore no glass would be used. The shutters being made very tight, by calking in winter, would make the school-room much warmer than has been common; and being so well ventilated, and so high in the centre, it would be more healthy. 6. The stove, furnace, or open grate, being in the centre of the room, has great advantages, from diffusing the heat to all parts, and equally to all the scholars: it also admits the pipe to go perpendicularly up, without any inconvenience, and it greatly facilitates the ventilation, and the retention or escape of heat, by means of the sliding cap above. tween centres, with a collar beam of one and a half inch plank, well spiked across each, and the heel of the rafter notched out to rest upon the plate; the front part projecting and forming the support to the eave, and that portion of the rafter will be planed, as will also the projecting pieces supporting the roof at the gables. The weather-boarding will be planed, and beveled, and strips three inches wide firmly nailed over the joints. The carpenter work, including blackboard, will be the same as others, excepting where the change in the plan makes it necessary and the materials also of the best quality. The masonry will also be as the first, with the same arrangement of cellar windows and cellar entrance; the plastering also in like manner; the painting also the same, with glass of the same size and number in each frame. A well and privy, also fencing, and all complete to the satisfaction of the com mittee. ESTIMATE. A building after this plan would cost four hundred and eighty dollars without a cellar; with one, according to the specification, six hundred dollars. This engraving presents a view of a Rhode Island village schoolhouse. It is situated in a beautiful grove, on a little knoll which admits of a basement room in the rear, originally cesigned for a library and readingroom for the village, but now occupied by a primary school. It is built of stone in a style very common in structures of this kind in England. The inain room, which is intended for a school room, although for the present used for lectures and religious exercises, is very appropriately finished-the walls being made to represent stone work of a very subdued neutral tint, and the ceiling, supported by wooden tracery, is finished tion of oak. It is thoroughly ventilated, and warmed by air heated in a chamber below. In this very pleasing specimen of the Elizabethan style, and other varieties not commonly introduced into structures of this kind, it is a pleasing variety in the style of architecture which characterizes the village and country school houses of Canada. In many neighbourhoods it is a matter of economy to build of stone, and where this is the case, the style of architecture should be adapted to the material. The style and arrangement of the seats and desks is indicated in the illustrations given at the end. The end pieces are of cast iron, and so shaped as to facili partially in the roof, leaving the PLAN NO. 6.-END AND SIDE PERSPECTIVE OF A PRIMARY AND SECONDARY, OR BOYS tate the sweeping of the room, necessary open space above to AND GIRLS' SCHOOL, WITH GROUNDS, ETC.-FIG I. and the pupils getting in and out protect the room from the effects of excessive heat and cold. The | of their seats, and at the same time are firmly attached to the floor ceiling, wainscoting, seats, desks and doors, are grained in imita- | by screws. This building is 30 feet by 20 feet. The accompanying Fig. 2 exhibits the Ground Plan of the foregoing school-house, and is designed to afford accommodation for a Primary and Secondary department in the building. C. is the Primary, and D the Secondary, or Grammar School department. The room C is 25 feet wide by 22 feet long, with desks and seats attached for 60 pupils. The room D is 25 feet wide by 30 feet long, with desks and seats attached for 70 pupils. The building may, if desired, be used as a boys' and girls' school. A is the boys' entry, and is 6 feet wide by 10 feet long. B is the girls' entry, and is of the same dimensions as that for the boys. P, in either room, is the Teacher's Desk and Platform. The seats for the younger pupils are placed immediately in front of the Teacher's desks and are slightly lower in their elevation above the floor, than those in the rear of the School-room. See illustrations in Part V., at the end. as This is the most complete as well as the most useful, of the buildings of its class. The double entrances to each room-one in front and one in rear-will be found very convenient. "If the apartments designated "boys'" and "giris'" clothes' rooms on the ground plan, be used for recitation purposes, their entire privacy may be effected by using the front trances for ordinary purposes, during School hours. There is also, here, a long platform, which, if laced on the opposite side of the room where there are no windows, will both give greater blackboard space and afford a safer and more pleasant light to the pupils' eyes, without any increase of cost. en PLAN. NO. 7.-FRONT PERSPECTIVE, ETC., OF A BOYS AND GIRLS' SCHOOL.-FIG. I. The bell is an indispensable requisite to the School, and with its neat belfry, forms quite an ornament to this building. It should always be rung a reasonable time before the commencement of the exercises, to enable pu pils by increased speed, to be in their seats in due time; and the ringing of it, at the close of the fore and afternoon session, will enable parents within its sound, to know whether that loitering on the way home, which should not be permitted, has been practised. It need scarcely be stated, that it is the Teacher's duty to be on the ground some time before the e ular exercises commence, and to be the last person on it after they close. If he practice this duty rigidly himself, and also hold his pupils responsible for the propriety of their behaviour on the way to and from school, he will soon find that their promptness and regularity will increase. The design is in the pointed style of architecture. Any rectangular, plan will suit it; and the principles of light and ventilation may be fully carried out in this as in other plans. The principal light is from one large mullioned window in the rear end. The side openings are for air in summer, not glazed, but closed with light shutters. The ventilator, as shown on the ridge of the roof of the building, may be of any required size, say 2 ft. wide and 12 in. high, sliding up and down between the stove pipe and the outward case, forming cap to exclude water. This cap may be pushed up or let down b a rod affixed to the under edge, and lying against the smoke pip Height may be gained in the roof by framing with collar beams se up 4 or 5 feet above the caves. The sides, if not of brick or ston may be boarded vertically, as seen in the engraving. PLAN No. 1.-PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF SCHOOL-HOUSE, OUTBUILDINGS, AND GROUNDS.-(Adapted to Plan No. 1, on page 39.) In the February number of this Journal we introduced some remarks on the proper sites of school-houses, and the various kinds of flowers, shrubs, and trees with which the school-grounds ought to be ornamented, and which can easily be procured in this country-they being indigenous to our soil and climate. The above perspective of school-house, out-buildings and grounds furnishes another and a beautiful illustration of what we would recommend on this subject. The size of school lots must, in some measure, be determined by the facility with which land in desirable situations can be obtained. In country places, and in many towns and villages, school lots of at least half or quarter of an acre each, can be easily procured. But in all cases, whether the grounds be large or small, they ought to be laid out and prepared with a view to both convenience and taste. Every thing around, as well as within a school-house should be attractive to the eye and improving to the taste of the pupils. It is in connexion with the school-house that they receive many of their earliest and most durable impressions. Those impressions should be on the side of neatness, virtue and cheerfulness. This is not likely to be the case where the site of the school-house is in a noisy, dirty thoroughfare of the city, or in a low, damp, or bleak, unsheltered place in the country; nor if all attraction to comfort and decency be neglected in the internal furniture and out door arrangements of the house itself. How different will be the associations, impressions, and feelings of a pupil where the house and grounds are provided as represented in the above engraving, from those of a pupil attending school where the house is dirty and com fortless, where the play grounds are the high-way or the street, and where indecencies are almost imposed as a necessity from the absence of the requisite provisions against them. In the above engraving, it will be observed that the situation is represented as retired, dry, and pleasant; that the ground is made smooth, and sown with grass, planted with shady trees, tastefully arranged in groups, and round the sides, and protected by a neat and substantial inclosure. In the rear of the building the yard is divided by a high and close fence; each portion appropriately fitted up and provided with suitable conveniences,-the one assigned for the exclusive use of the boys, and the other for that of the girls. The entire premises exhibit an aspect of seclusion, neatness, order, propriety and cheerfulness, and the absence of everything calculated to defile the mind, or wound the most sensitive modesty. We present next a block plan of school premises. In respect to one part of it we remark, that we think the fence or partition which separates the one part of the grounds from the other, ought to extend from the school-house to the wood-house, as well as from the latter to the rear of the premises. POSITION.-It is very desirable that the front of the school-house be towards the south; that the north end be occupied by the master's desk; that this end may or may not be a dead wall; that the desks be so placed that pupils, as they sit at them, will look towards the north. Some of the advantages of this arrangement are, that the2 pupils will obtain more correct ideas upon the elements of geography, as all maps suppose the reader to be looking northward; that the north wall, when having no windows, will exclude the severest cold of winter; that the pupils will look towards a dead wall, and thus avoid the great evil of facing a glare of light-or, if a window or two be allowed in the north wall, the light coming from that quarter is less vivid, and therefore less dangerous, than that which comes from any other; lastly, that the door being in the south end, will open towards the winds which prevail in summer, and from the cold winds of winter. If from necessity, the house must front northward, the master's desk should be still in the north end of the room, and the pupils, when seated, look in that direction. (See plan on page 36.) SIZE. In cities and towns, it is generally impossible to obtain School grounds of proper size, in convenient localities, without great expense, and their dimensions must therefore depend on circumstanIt might be remarked, however, that it would be better for pupils to walk a considerable distance, than that the limits of their play-ground should be so narrow as not to admit free exercise for the whole school. ces. ACCESSIBILITY.-A central site, even considered in reference to population, should be, to some extent, controlled by accessibility. Some pupils may reside at a short distance in a straight line, from a proposed site, yet an intervening stream or mountain may render miles of travel necessary to reach it. Some, on the other hand, may live twice as far off, yet, having none of these impediments to contend with, may reach the school with less actual walking than the former. The apparent distance of each class in a straight line from the school, is therefore not always to be regarded, but the actual distance to be travelled, taking into account the natural and unavoidable barriers in the way. Impediments of this kind ought always to be taken into view, in the first sub-division of a school section; an 1, if possible, they should be made the boundaries between schools. But where this is impracticable, they must be taken into full account in the location of the house. Where the territory attached to a school is traversed by a large stream or mountain, if there be a bridge over the one or a gap in the other, the vicinity of either will be, in point of mere accessibility, a fit location for the school. Territory level in its surface and undivided by considerable streams, is generally traversed in opposite directions by a system of public roads. If due and prudent advantage be taken of these, the accessibility of the site may be greatly promoted. On the whole, a central position, like accessibility, consists in promoting the convenience of the greatest possible number of pupils. Wherever land can be had at reasonable rates, half an acre is the least amount that would well subserve the purposes of an ordinary school, and an acre would be none too much. SKETCH OF GROUNDS, ETC.-The following plans represent, each, the first named quantity; but their application to a full acre will be a matter of no difficulty, and the addition will be greatly promotive of all the effects intended to be produced. A different use, however, may ultimately be made of the other half acre that prudent foresight may add to the School grounds, and which will perhaps be the best that could possibly be made of it. Teaching has now assumed the rank of a profession. To retain it such, it must have its known permanent locality. The Clergyman resides near the church. The Lawyer has his office and his residence near the law courts. The Physician places himself in the town, or other densest portion of the population to be benefitted by his skill. This is also the law of other avocations, whether mechani The erection of a Teacher's house, on a portion of ground sufficiently large for a garden and the other purposes of a family, will be found economical as well as beneficial in many particulars. A fair estimate of the rent of the premises will reduce, to that extent annually, the compensation to be paid for his services. His vicinity to the school-house will enable him to guard it and the grounds from injury, when the School is not in session. His supervision over the play and out door conduct of the pupils will be greatly increased for good. Those frequent changes of Teachers, which now so much retard the progress of scholars, will be materially lessened in number. The standing and influence of the Teacher will be promoted, by placing him in and before the community, as a resident official member of it, laboring for its benefit in the most important department of its interests. In short, from whatever point it may be contemplated, the Teacher's house assumes an importance, in the building up of the Common School system, only secondary to that of the school-house. It is not of course, intended to intimate, that this addition to the necessary agencies of the system should at once be made, nor even that the means of any section should be over-strained to promote it. But it is very certain, that the prudent forecast which shall now provide for its ultimate accomplishment, will be most abundantly justified and rewarded in the end. SHAPE. The most dry and beautiful grounds are those which slope |