whether these appliances were wisely administered,) they give all up to chance, and believing neither in innate ideas nor in the use of means, rest satisfied with a low standard of action, and go through life without ever having a glimpse of anything better than themselves. Indeed, if they see anything better, they understand it so little, that they think it must be a delusive appearance, and that an earnest view of any subject is extravagance, or even insanity. But I do not think so great a want of faith is very

common.

This is too long a letter, so good-by for the present. When I think you are rested from this, I will write again.

M.

LETTER III.

MY DEAR ANNA, Let me introduce you to my little family. It consists of twenty children, some of whom have been under my care for three years. These latter are eight in number, and from nine to twelve years of age; then I have six who are not seven years old, who know how to read pretty well, but who study no lessons more difficult than a simple bit of poetry, the names of a few places on the map, a list of words from the black-board of the parts of a flower, or an interlined Latin fable, which I give them thus early, because Latin is one of the elements of our language, and its forms are so definite that it gives definiteness to ideas. These children print, write, draw from outlined forms and blocks, as well as from their own fancies, and listen to all sorts of information which I give them orally, and which they recount to me again when questioned. I tell a great many stories over maps, which are, in my dominions, not only lines running hither and thither with a few names interspersed, but real mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, which I clothe with verdure, and people with all kinds of animate forms, such as beasts, birds, fishes, and William Tells, or other in

teresting individuals and tribes. I have a book, called "Wonders of the World," which is my Aladdin's lamp, and when I take it down, little hands are clapped and bright eyes glisten.

But I must not forget to mention my other six, who are sweet little buds of promise as one can well imagine; who love to hear stories about all living things, from oysters up through the more intelligent shell-fish that have heads as well as a foot, to small pink pigs and their mothers, butterflies, birds, dogs, horses, cows, and fellow-children; and to learn that their stockings are made of wool that grew on the back of a lamb, their shoes of the skin of a calf, their ribbons from the cocoons of a moth, the table of a tree, &c., &c. These little people were committed to my keeping directly out of their mothers' or their nurses' arms. I am always diffident about taking the place of the former, but rejoice to rescue babes from the care of the latter.

The first thing to be taught these, is how to live happily with each other; the next, how to use language. It is not necessary to wait till they can read before we begin this last instruction. They love dearly to repeat the words of simple poetry or of poetic prose, (Mrs. Barbauld is my classic for babes,) and it is curious to see how synthetical are their first mental operations, and how difficult they find it to disentangle the words of a short sentence, which evidently has hitherto been but one word of many syllables. Names of things can be made to stand forth distinctly before other words, because the objects of the senses do; but when I first ask children of three or four years old to make sentences and put in the and and, their pleasure in recognizing the single word is even greater, and they will amuse themselves a great deal with the exercise, running to me to whisper, "just now I said the;" or, Charley said and." If the printed word is pointed out at the same time, it is still more interesting, because then it becomes an object of the senses, a real thing, just as much as the book it is printed in. You know I take

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the royal road to the attainment of this art, and teach words first, not letters. I find this a much better as well as happier way, for a word is a whole host of thoughts to a young child, and three words in a row a whole gallery of pictures. Bird, nest, tree! If a child has ever played in a meadow, or even in a garden, or sat on a grassy bank under the window, or has seen pigeons fly down into a city street, what subject of endless conversation does this combination of things present! The book that contains such words, and perhaps a story, of which they form a part, is itself an illuminated volume, and is immediately invested with a charm it cannot lose, for what child (or man) was ever tired of the thought of a bird, or a tree, to say nothing of that more rare and mysterious object, a nest? The warbled song, the downy breast, the sheltering wing, the snug retreat, have such an analogy with the mother's carol or lullaby, the brooding bosom, and the beloved arms, a child's dearest home, that every sentiment is enlisted, and a thousand things, never to be forgotten, may be said. There is no need of pictures on such a page as this. I well remember the shining pages of my childhood's books,—a lustre never emitted by white paper alone. I doubt not the ancient fancy of illuminating the works of great minds with gilded and scarlet letters grew out of some such early association with printed, or rather written thoughts; for printing was not known then.

I believe you do not approve of this method of teaching to read; but I cannot help thinking a variety of experience like mine would make you a convert to my mode. I claim to have discovered it, and the bright little six years old rogue, upon whom I tried my first experiment, learned to read in six weeks, and every word was an experience to him, for I made up the lessons as we went on from day to day right out of his little life. He would scream with delight to see what he called his words on the sheet upon which I daily printed a new lesson. I have no doubt every name of a thing looked to him like the thing itself, for his imagination

was a very transmuting one. You would have been as amused at his antics over the word "and" as I was. I only introduced such oysters of words occasionally into my gallery of pictures, but he never forgot any such useful members of society, though I think he could not have made pictures of them. One great point is, that children are always happy to read in this way; and to work their little brains against their will, seems to me cruel. It is quite an effort for them to learn to observe closely enough to distinguish such small particulars even as words, with which they have such vivid associations, and altogether an unnatural one to learn arbitrary signs, to which nothing already known can be attached. Until I was convinced that this was the best method, I always found myself instinctively helping innocent children along, through their first steps in reading, by means which, at the time, I half thought were tricks, and unsafe indulgences. I feared that I was depriving them of some desirable and wholesome discipline, such as we often hear of in our extreme youth from nursery-maids, who tell stories of parents who whip their children every morning that they may be good all day. But I will never again force helpless little ones, of three or four years old, to learn the alphabet and the abs, until every letter is interesting to them from the position it holds in some symbolic word.

When letters are learned in the ordinary way, they are often associated with some image, as a stands for apple, b for boy, c for cat; and these associations may be so many hindrances (certainly in the case of the vowels) to the next step in the process, because they must all be unlearned before the letters can be applied to other words. In our language there are so many silent letters in words, so many sounds for each vowel, and the alphabetic sound of the consonants is so different from their sound in words, that I do not care how late the analysis is put off.

After a while, I string columns of little words together, in which the vowel has the same sound, as can, man, pan, tan,

and let these be the first spelling-lessons; but I prefer, even to this mode, that of letting children write from dictation the words they are familiar with on a page. One dear little boy came to school three months before he wished to read, or to look at a book, except for the pictures. At last he came into the class without an invitation, and has learned very fast, and can read better than some children who have read longer. He is a perfect little dumpling, as gay and happy as a lark all day, and I would not for the world make it a task for him to use his brain, thus risking the diminution of his rotundity. He is as wise as a judge, though he has not lost his baby looks; and he might be made to reason subtly at an early age I doubt not; but I hope all such powers will be allowed to slumber peacefully as yet. He is in the mean time learning to read slowly; to print, to draw houses, to repeat poetry, to sing songs about birds, bees, and lambs, and to have as much fun between these exercises as I can furnish him with, - the latter in another apartment, of course. I have taken no pains to teach him his letters. I have a great repugnance to letters, with their many different sounds, so puzzling to the brain ; - but one day, finding he knew some of them, I pointed to g, and asked him if he knew the name of it. He said "grass," which was the first word in which he had seen g. So w he first called “water,” for the same reason. I gave him their sounds, but not their alphabetical names. I was obliged to give him two sounds for g, one hard, one soft, and he soon knew all the consonants by their powers. I hope he will not ask me anything about the vowels at present.*

* All these difficulties with which I wrestled so many years in my character of champion of childhood, are entirely solved and done away with by the more recently introduced method, introduced by authority of a distinguished philologist, of teaching the Italian alphabet, and always calling c and g hard, as the old Romans are supposed to have done. This mode is made practicable in the "First Nursery Reading-Book," and the last edition of the "Primer of Reading and Drawing." Abundant experience shows that reading taught in this way leaves nothing to be unlearned in English,