there has been developed the idea of impersonal law, in the organization of a community whose associated wisdom shall decide upon what is right, and what is for the best interests of the whole; whose associated power shall enforce the right and develop the good, as far as the limits of its ability extend. The historical study of these relations of men to each other is necessary, not only to a full development of the student's mental powers, but as a preparation by which he is fitted for an intelligent participation in the rights and duties of those. relations.

The method of nature is here evident, that the child is born into the family, and learns, by subjection to his parents, the duty of subjection to all just authority, before he can understand the ground on which the authority rests. He is brought under the order and discipline of the family, before he can rise to the comprehension of that vast scheme of universal order, planned by Infinite Wisdom, in obedience to the impulses of Unfathomable Love, and carried into execu tion by Almighty Power,- that Universal Order after which all wise legislation strives, according to which all just judicial decisions are framed, and which all righteous executive power seeks to embody.

So, in the school, the first and most important ideas of law come not from histories and constitutions, nor from political orations, read or studied by the child, but from the wise and just discipline of the school-room, from the rules of play observed in the games among his school-fellows, and from the perception that the parents and the teachers are also subject, even in school matters, to the laws of the commonwealth and to the votes of the town. The judicious teacher, by occasional words, rightly directing the child's attention for a moment to such themes, gives what we have called incidental instruction in politics and law. The next step, in this branch of study, is history in the ordinary sense of the word. Afterwards, in the higher school or college, the pupil should take a brief course of study in constitutional law, commentaries on the constitution of his own state, of the United States, and of Great Britain, comparing them with those of Greece and Rome, and of the Hebrew Commonwealth.

It was our original purpose, in commencing these papers, to have continued them so as to embrace remarks on psychological and theological studies; but, as circumstances have compelled us to defer the remaining papers to an indefinite period, we will append here some general cautions to the reader, which we had proposed to leave to the end. A recent very friendly criticism on our views shows a misapprehension of them, by saying that we have placed the studies of the

encyclopedia in a right line, instead of in a circle, and that we have provided only for the education of the knowing faculties, without providing for the education of the powers of expression and action, and of the feelings and sentiments.

Let the teacher, who is really desirous of knowing the true plan of education, remember that the body and its organs need training and care for their preservation and full development; that the sentiments and passions need to be judiciously called into play, and guided in their direction; that, above all, promptness and efficiency of action, and perseverance of purpose, are to be cultivated with great care, under a consecration to the love of God, and charity to men. In our scheme of studies we are showing what we consider the natural order of intellectual growth, and the following of this order will simply give the best opportunities for the other kinds of education. Thus intellectually we place the cultivation of the powers of observation first in the scale, preceding that of the inventive and of the reasoning powers. This intellectual order of nature gives the opportunity, in physical education, of keeping the young child out of doors, rambling, under the guidance of its teacher, by the roadside, or over the pastures, to the benefit of its body as much as of its mind. The same intellectual order gives, in moral education, the opportunity for developing pure tastes, the love of natural beauty, and affording social pleasures of a higher character than in the ordinary plays of the school-yard. It gives also the best opportunity for impressing the young heart with the infinite wisdom and love manifested in the creation; and the freedom of the walk allows the opportunity for the child to manifest its own choice and will in showing kindness to its playmates according to the command of the Heavenly Father. In like manner, the whole arrangement of the intellectual problems placed before the human spirit would be found, if we understood it in its natural order, to be adapted for the appropriate furtherance, at the proper age, of each part of physical, moral, and religious education.

The complaint which has been made, that an intellectual education is of no moral benefit, but rather a moral injury, so far as it is well grounded, is grounded as much upon the fact that our intellectual drilling has been inverted in its order, crippling rather than cultivating the powers of observation, as upon the fact that the attention given to intellectual education has withdrawn the attention from moral training. This idea appears to have been one of the moving springs in the heart of the late lamented Josiah Holbrook. In like manner, the injury done to the bodily health of children, by overstudy, comes as much from the unnatural inversion of studies, the

giving of that which is abstract before that which is concrete, as from the absolute amount of time spent by the children in close attention to the subjects set before them. Whatever be the amount of knowledge acquired in a given time, the ease of its acquisition will, evidently, be partly proportional to the lucidness and naturalness of the order in which it was acquired. The purely intellectual question of the true order of studies is, therefore, intimately connected, in more than one mode, with the question of moral and physical training, with the whole question of the highest welfare of the individual and of the family, the state, and the church.

Nor, in either physical, intellectual, moral or religious education, should we forget the artistic side;—that is to say, we must remember that skill in expression or action is as desirable as simple power. A man not only needs power, but needs it under control, else it loses its worth. Of how little avail would physical strength and health be to a man who could neither walk well nor swim well, who was at ease neither on the rower's seat nor in the saddle, who could neither drive nor skate, who could neither mow nor dig, but who, in all manly sports and in all useful labors, found himself strong indeed, but clumsy, and inefficient for lack of skill. In like manner, he would feel humbled and awkward indeed, who was conscious of great thoughts, and of deep emotions, and of a strong purpose to do right, and was nevertheless unable to express himself either by spoken or written words, by chisel or pencil, or by musical tones, or by wellplanned and well-timed deeds.

While all studies must be used as means of developing and guiding some power of action and expression, as well as of understanding, it is perhaps the especial function of the historic studies, of trade, art, language and law, to cultivate the powers of expression; and the teacher must remember to apply them in such manner as to produce this end. As the bread of the mind is truth; so the bread of the moral nature is action, or expression, and the pupil must be drawn out into expression, not made the mere recipient of instruction.

To pass to the other point in which we would caution the reader against a misapprehension of our views, it does not follow, because we have arranged the five branches of the hierarchy in a certain logical order, with Mathematics at one end and Theology at the other, that this order is to be followed in arranging successive years of school life. It would better apply to the minutes. The order is that of logical development, that in which the subjects are to be successively unfolded to their fullest extent; but it would be absurd to postpone physical teaching entirely until a full knowledge of mathematics.

rows.

had been obtained, and so of any other branches. We may perhaps compare the course of education to the phyllotactic spiral on a twofifths arrangement. The mathematics are the row of leaves on which the zero leaf is to be taken, and you cannot rise to a higher point in your mathematics, except by running round through the other four For the full, harmonious development of the child's mind we need a perpetual recurrence to the five essential branches of inquiry suggested by every sight of nature. The youngest child in the school brings in, perhaps, a dandelion. What is its form, and the number of its rays? These questions belong to mathematics. What is its color, taste and smell, its medicinal effects, its relations to the sunflower and other composite plants?- these are questions of physics. The derivation of its name, dandelion,- dents de lion, dens leonis,

from the form of the leaf, and of the generic name, taraxacum, from its medical effect; the fact of its introduction from Europe; the quotation of the lines,

"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold;"—

these would be historical instructions from the same simple flower. Then ask the child to tell you why he likes this flower so much; whether it is because it is prettier than morning-glories, or because it comes so early, or because it is so common,—and you stimulate him, perhaps, to one of his earliest efforts at a psychological self-examination. Finally, speak to him, reverently and warmly, of the goodness of the Heavenly Father, who has spread beauty with so unsparing a hand before us, and tell him of the Saviour's appeal to our conscience, drawn from the beauty of the lily, using simple language that he can understand,—and you will have given him theological lessons also.

Now, every lesson in the school of life will lead, as simply as this dandelion has done, to the five great branches of intellectual studies; and no lesson has been fully taught until it has thus been linked into relation with all the main lines of dependent truth. The simplest geometry has its application to physics, its history of discovery and application, its psychological questions of the foundations of belief and the nature of proof, and its theological aspect, in such queries as whether the relations of space are or are not dependent on the constitution of our minds, and thus on the will of the Creator. The cycle of these five branches must be daily recurring, and our aim has been, in these articles, to show in what order the five branches are to be placed, which must always precede the others, which must first receive full development, and which, the crown and glory of the whole, must be always least within the reach of finite faculties.

THE POWERS TO BE EDUCATED.

BY THOMAS HILL, D. D. LL. D,, PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE.

As I was journeying towards this city to partake in the pleasures of this gathering I saw upon an island, in the northern part of yonder brineless ocean, a little collection of five or six houses, and among them one hut that attracted the attention of all our party. It was so low, that although the door nearly reached the eaves, a tall man might be forced to stoop to enter; it was so poor that neither glass nor sash was in its casements. Yet it was a palace wherein a queen was reigning and was rearing kings. It was a school-house built through the missionary zeal of a noble girl who after procuring its erection and gathering in it all the children of the island, gave two years' service to this school of less than a score of children, gratuitously, and now two other years with a pay that is merely nominal. As I heard the story of her generous labors, undertaken with no thought that they should be known and appreciated beyond the narrow confines of that lonely island; I felt a new sense of the dignity and grandeur of our profession as teachers and in my heart, thanked God that He had called me to such a goodly fellowship, embracing thousands of these humble but glorious laborers, one in purpose and devotion, with the teacher of North Manitou Island.

For as I heard the story, I endeavored to estimate the value of the work there, and measure as I would, I found it invaluable. Measure it by the cost of re-production, and it is immeasurable. For it is impossible to give to one already adult, instruction in the tender years of his youth. Measure by its utility and it is immeasurable; since the uses, to a man and to the community in which he lives, of the knowledge he may have gained and of the culture he may have received are innumerable, inestimable, and of eternal duration. Thus I was led anew to consider the greatness of the work of educating the young; and I thought I might be pardoned if I used this little. school on Manitou Island as an introduction to the thoughts which I hoped to bring forward at this meeting.

The course of instruction, the true selection and arrangement of studies in liberal education, is evidently one of the most important