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tion of the principles sung by the lips, I say to them that doing the right thing is the soul's song, which is as sweet to our heavenly Father, as the best music we can hear is to us. All reading to children should be more or less symbolical, and calculated to elevate the imagination, whose highest use is to represent the spiritual in the forms of beauty for our moral culture. In all the child's literature, with which our book-stores are flooded, there is very little which is truly imaginative (for I draw a distinction between the fanciful and imaginative). Nothing is worthy to be called imaginative that does not involve an idea, in the strictest sense of that word. The parables of the Old and New Testaments are embodiments of ideas, and touch this master-spring of the human mind Imagination. So is the Pilgrim's Progress; and so are many fairy tales, and many mythological stories of Greece, India, and the North. I have found an English book, called the "Heroes of Asgard," invaluable; and "The Story without an End" is a beautiful reading-book for children, in whose pages they find themselves in a maze of beautiful images and picturesque words, waking echoes that do not sleep again, but give presentiments and foretaste "of the perfect good and fair."

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In my own Kindergarten, I have the advantage of a teacher who knows how to read children's characteristics of temperament and imagination unerringly, and to read to them naturally. When she reads, as she does, a quarter of an hour every day, for moral culture, she always addresses herself to the youngest of the class; and it is equally interesting to the oldest of them. If attention wanders, she calls the name of the wanderer as if she were talking, and the result is the most complete general attention. As she never goes to the reading without having previously read the lesson over to herself, the book is merely her note-book for discourse as it were. Her favorite books are fables, fairy stories, the "Heroes of Asgard," Mrs. Farrar's "Robinson Crusoe," "Sandford and Merton," "Salzmann's Elements of Morality." This

exercise is very interesting to a spectator or listener. The children are drawn up close before her in a solid square, every eye seeking hers; and their spontaneous exclamations and interlocutions prove how completely she has them, heart and soul, in her keeping for the time being.

But while by this and other means, a large measure of moral and religious consciousness may be educated, we must beware of overstraining in this direction. Children who are made too conscientious become timid and morally weak, and often exhibit painful reactions. Coarse teachers often do great harm, with the best intentions, to finely strung moral organizations. Encouragement to good should altogether predominate over warning and fault-finding. It is often better, instead of blaming a child for short-coming, or even wrong-doing, to pity and sympathize, and, in a hopeful voice, speak of it as something which the child did not mean to do, or at least was sorry for as soon as done; suggesting at the same time, perhaps, how it can be avoided another time. Above all things, an invariable rule in moral education is not to throw a child upon self-defence. The movement towards defending one's self and making excuses, is worse than almost any act of overt wrong. Let the teacher always appear as the friend who is saving or helping the child out of evil, rather than as the accuser, judge, or executioner. Another principle should be, not to confound or put upon the same level the trespasses against the by-laws of the Kindergarten, made for the teacher's convenience, and those against the moral laws of the universe. The desirableness of the by-laws that we make for our convenience can be shown at times when the children are all calm, and their attention can be drawn to the subject; and if these regulations are broken, all that is necessary will be to ask if it is kind and loving to do such things? But it must never be forgotten that natural conscience always suffers when artificial duties are imposed. Hence the immoral effect of formality and superstition.

In a well-regulated Kindergarten there should be no punishments, but an understanding should be had with parents that sometimes the child is to be sent home for a day, or at least for some hours. The curtailment of the Kindergarten will generally prove an effectual restraint upon disorder, and it will not be necessary to repeat the penalty in a school year. But I shall say no more upon moral and 'religious exercises, Mrs. Mann having treated this part of the subject so exhaustively. It is to be remembered, however, that she had in her school children who had strayed much farther from the kingdom of heaven than those who will generally make up the Kindergarten. But she shows the spirit that should pervade all that is done to children at all times.

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CHAPTER VIII.

OBJECT LESSONS.

I NOW Come to Object Lessons, which should begin simultaneously with all the above exercises; for mental exercises are not only compatible with physical health, but necessary to it. The brain is not to be overstrained in child. hood, but it is to be used. Where it is left to itself, and remains uncultivated, it shrinks, and that is disease. A Ichild is not able to direct its own attention; it needs the help of the adult in the unfolding of the mind, no less than in the care of its body. Lower orders of animals can educate themselves, that is, develop in themselves their one power. As the animals rise in the scale of being, they are related more or less to their progenitors and posterity, and require social aid. But the human being, whose beatitude is "the communion of the just," is so universally related, that he cannot go alone at all. He is entirely dependent at first, and never becomes independent of those around him, any further than he has been so educated and trained by his relations with them, as to rise into union with God. And this restores him again to communion with his fellowbeings, as a beneficent Power among its peers.

The new method of education gives a gradual series of exercises, continuing the method of Nature. It cultivates the senses, by giving them the work of discriminating colors, sounds, &c.; sharpens perception by leading children to describe accurately the objects immediately around them.

Objects themselves, rather than the verbal descriptions of objects, are presented to them. The only way to make

words expressive and intelligible, is to associate them sensibly with the objects to which they relate. Children must be taught to translate things into words, before they can translate words into things. Words are secondary in nature; yet much teaching seems to proceed on the principle that these are primary, and so they become mere counters, and children are brought to hating study, and the discourse of teachers, instead of thirsting for them. To look at objects of nature and art, and state their colors, forms, and properties of various kinds, is no painful strain upon the mind. It is just what children spontaneously do when they are first learning to talk. It is a continuation of learning to talk. The object-teacher confines the child's attention to one thing, till all that is obvious about it is described; and then asks questions, bringing out much that children, left to themselves, would overlook, suggesting words when necessary, to enable them to give an account of what they see. It is the action of the mind upon real things, together with clothing perceptions in words, which really cultivates; while it is not the painful strain upon the brain which the study of a book is. To translate things into words, is a more agreeable and a very different process from translating words into things, and the former exercise should precede the latter. If the mind is thoroughly exercised in wording its perceptions, words will in their turn suggest the things, without painful effort, and memory have the clearness and accuracy of perception. On the other hand words will never be used without feeling and intelligence. Then, to read a book will be to know all of reality that is in it.

I am desirous to make a strong impression on this point, because, to many persons, I find object-teaching seems the opposite of teaching! They say that to play with things, does not give habits of study. They think that to commit to memory a page of description about a wild duck, for instance, is better than to have the wild duck to look at, leading the child to talk about it, describe it, and inquire into

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