so of other words. As far as possible we should always use Saxon words, but it is the words that come from the Latin and Greek, which it is most necessary to teach the meaning of; and they should be taught by things themselves, which have them for names or qualities.

A good linguist will have an advantage here, by being able to trace the words through the original language up to nature; for every word is, in the last analysis, either a picture, whose original in nature is its definition, or a poem, which can be recognized by the general imagination. A child whose vernacular is English will easily see that a bit is something bitten off, and so is smaller than the mouth; but that morsel means a bit is not so obvious to one who does not know that morsus, also, is the perfect participle of the Latin verb for bite. That acute means sharp is plainer to a child who knows that acu is the Latin for needle.

No time is lost which is given to this definition of words by the objects of nature and art, from which, or from whose attributes, words are derived. In words are fossilized the sciences, that is, the knowledge mankind has already attained of nature; and he who understands all the words in use, would know all that is known, nay, much that has been once known and long forgotten. But the study of objects not only gives significance to words, it educates the senses, and produces the habit of original attention and investigation of nature. These do not come of themselves, as we see in the instance of country children, who are ignorant of what is around them, because left to grow up among the objects of nature, without having their attention called to things in their minutiæ, or their relations in extensu; nor led to clothe with words their perceptions, impressions, and reasonings.

Besides Mr. Sheldon's "Elementary Instruction," there is the "Child's Book of Nature," by Worthington Hooker, in three parts, which will be a great help to an object-teacher. It

is published by the Harpers, and is the very best introduction of children to flowers.* Mrs. Mann's "Flower People" is also full of facts, carefully studied out. This is a charming book for children to read in, when they shall come to read. It is a great pity that the latest edition, published by Ticknor and Fields in 1862, is not illustrated by the flowers spoken of. But perhaps these may be lithographed, and published in a card-case, to accompany it. Both the science and cultivation of flowers comes very naturally into the Kindergarten..

children!

The greatest difficulty about object-teaching is, that it requires personal training, and wide-awake attention in teachers, of a character much more thorough than they commonly have. When it shall become general, as it certainly must, it will no longer be supposed that any ordinary person who can read and write, and is obliged to do something for a living, will be thought fit to keep a school for small The present order of things will be reversed. Ordinary persons, with limited acquirements, will be obliged to confine themselves to older pupils, who are able to study books and only need to have some one to set their lessons and hear them recited; while persons of originality and rich culture will be reserved to discover and bring out the various genius and faculty which God has sown broadcast in the field of the race, and which now so often runs into the rank vegetation of vice, or wastes into deserts of concentrated mediocrity. Then this season of education will command the largest remuneration, as it will secure the finest powers to the work; and because such work cannot be pur

sued by any one person for many years, nor even for a short time without assistance, relieving from the ceaseless attention that a company of small children requires, for little children cannot be wound up to go like watches; but to keep them in order, the teacher must constantly meet their outbursting life with her own magnetic forces; while their *Gray's How Plants Grow, is invaluable for a teacher.

employments must be continually interchanged, and mingled with their recreations.

Children ought to continue these Kindergarten exercises from the age of three to nine; and if faithfully taught, they could then go into what is called scholastic training, in a state of mind to receive from it the highest advantages it is capable of giving; free from the disadvantages which are now so obvious as to have raised, in our practical country, a party prejudiced against classical education altogether.

CHAPTER IX.

GEOMETRY.

REV. DR. HILL, the present President of Harvard College, in his articles in Dr. Barnard's "Journal of Education," has set forth the importance of Geometry in the earliest education, giving the Science of Form precedence to that of numbers. Of course he does not mean that logical demonstration is to form one of the exercises of little children! but that observation of differences and resemblances of shape, and the combination of forms, should be inwoven with the amusements of children. He invented a toy on the principle of the Chinese tanagram, (published by Hickling, Swan & Co., in Boston,) to further an exercise which begins in the cradle with the examination of the hands and feet.

The blocks are the first materials. Take the cube and ask how many faces it has; how many corners; and whether one face is larger than another or equal; and finally, lead the child to describe a cube as a solid figure with six equal sides, and eight corners. Then take a solid triangle from the box and draw out by questions that it has five sides and six corners, that three of its sides are equal, and two others equal; that the three larger sides are four-sided, and the two smaller sides are three-sided; and that the corners sharper than those of a cube.

are

Make analogous use of all the blocks, and of the furniture of the room, of the sphere and its parts, the cylinder, &c. Do not require the definition-formulas at first, but content yourself with opening the children's eyes to the facts which

the formula afterwards shall declare.

Paper-folding can be made subservient to another step, just short of abstraction.

Give each one of a class a square piece of paper, and proceed thus: What is the shape of this paper? How many sides has it? Which is the longest side? How many corners has it? Have in hand, already cut, several acute and obtuse angled triangles, and showing them, ask if the corners of the square are like these corners? If they are as sharp as some of them; or as blunt as some? Spreading out the triangle before them say, which is the sharpest corner, and which the bluntest? and let the children compare them with the corners of the square, by laying them upon the square. They will see that the square corners are neither blunt nor sharp, but as they will perhaps say, straight. Let them look round the room, and on the furniture and window-sashes, find these several kinds of corner. At least they can always find right angles in the furniture. Then tell them there is another word for corners, namely, angles, that a square corner is a right angle, a sharp corner a sharp angle, and a blunt corner a blunt angle.

If the teacher chooses she can go farther and tell them that acute is another word for sharp, and obtuse another word for blunt; (or these two Latin words may be deferred till by and by, one new word angle being enough to begin with.)

You can then say, "Now tell me how you describe a square, supposing somebody should ask you that did not know; " and give them more or less help to say: "A square is a figure with four equal sides and four straight corners (or right angles)." To prove to them that it is necessary to mention the right angles in describing a square, you can make a rhombus, and show them its different shape with its acute and obtuse angles. Having thus exhausted the description of a square, let every one double up his square, and so get an oblong. Ask if this is a square? What is it? How does it differ from a square? Are all four sides different from each other? Which sides are alike? How are the corners (or