If such only was the spirit of the fathers, fathers too often traduced and belied by a degenerate posterity, — I would to Heaven the children were as the fathers this very day!

I ask, then, that a dignified authority resume its place at the fireside, the table, and the teacher's desk. Let that authority be tempered with gentleness, and exercised with true greatness of heart. Thus will the family and the school together be redeemed from a loose lawlessness on the one hand, and from the reign of tyranny and terror on the other. Obedience will become cheerful and prompt, and the relations between teacher and pupil, parent and child, will be more delightful, as they are controlled most successfully by the combined influences of reason, affection, and the sense of right.

Reducing this general doctrine to the ordinary management of the school-room, I would require exact obedience in all things essential to the welfare of the school. I would be careful not to demand of pupils what would be at once difficult to perform, and of little advantage to individual pupils or the whole school when performed. While I would require great good order, and the utmost punctuality in every duty, I would avoid the sternness of military rule, and would abate somewhat that exactness of military order and movements in the school-room which some teachers have advocated. The school wheels will run all the easier for a little play.

If we pass now from the department of government to that of instruction, we shall find the same tendency

to extremes.

Let us look first at the matter of instruction. Educators differ widely as to what shall be taught in the family and school. Some insist, for example, that all studies shall be practical; intending, by their use of that term, such studies as can be made directly available in the business of life. Others contend that the main object of study, whether in common school or college, is discipline of the mental

powers.

The one class, like Master Gradgrine, - borrowing a neighbor's use of Dickens, use of Dickens, would have only facts communicated in the instruction of the schools. "What I want," said he, "is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. Stick to facts." Stick to the practical, says our extremist of the one part. He quotes with great faith the saying of one Agesilaus, King of Sparta, who, on being asked what a child should learn when young, replied, "Those things which he will need to practise when he becomes old." Is anything more reasonable than this, says our man of practical ideas. What needs a farmer to know about algebra, or a physician about conic sections? Why should the village blacksmith, in embryo, study

geography, since he will never expect to leave his forge; and what use of history to the children of the city alderman, who does not care to have them know who even their grandfather was? All studies beyond the demands of common business in common life they would ignore as useless; and as for "college learning," they hold it in perfect abhorrence.

On the other hand, many educators, who have been trained in the higher schools, and who have become familiar with the idea that study in school or college is intended to sharpen the wits and train the powers for service in any field, stand too often with one foot upon the classics and the other upon the mathematics, and swear by all that is great, that there is no other foundation of true learning; and that, without these, all other knowledge is vain! The one party cries, "Practical knowledge-useful learning-give us the facts." The other repeats the old triangular: "Classics-mathematics - discipline ! "

Gentlemen, the truth is between you. I wish for my son both the discipline and the practical knowledge; and, so far as may be, I would secure them both in one and the same series of studies. Let the useful branches be pursued with such exactness, the facts arranged with such care, and classified with such philosophical accuracy, that knowledge and discipline will come from their study at the same time.

Let the facts of chemistry, for example, the mutual action and reaction and combination of elements constantly going on in the world of atoms, furnish a fund of living interest to the young mind, while they tax and train the powers in deducing and committing their marvellous formulæ,- formulæ hardly less difficult to trace and remember than those of Algebra. Thus, while our extremists quarrel over their several favorite courses, as practical on the one hand, and disciplinary on the other, I doubt whether our children should pursue any branch of study, which does not give them, in its acquisition, both knowledge and discipline. At the same time, it is not necessary that every study should conduce to these two ends in an equal degree.

Again, there is a wide difference in public opinion upon the question of the solid and ornamental in education.

Farmer Jones takes his daughter to the Female Collegiate Institute, and cautions the principal against allowing her to pursue the "high-falutin" studies, as she will probably be only a farmer's wife, and wants only a solid education. Wise old gentleman! He has seen his neighbor Smith's daughters spoiled by a quarter's tuition in French and two quarters at the piano; semi-acquirements wholly useless, he thinks, when they return to the churn and the washboard! He wishes Nancy's studies, therefore, to be

confined to arithmetic, grammar, and natural philosophy; not quite certain whether even the last-named branch will do her any good. He has a particular aversion to calisthenics, because of its reputed resemblance to dancing; and he wishes her musical training to be confined wholly to psalm tunes! Nancy is somewhat tried by the strictness of her father's injunctions upon the principal, since she has some little aspiration for a different style of accomplishments, and secretly resolves to learn what she can by looking on! But the old gentleman has hardly withdrawn from the office of the principal of the Female Collegiate Institute, when the Honorable John Stubbs is ushered in with Flora Matilda, his daughter, and her cousin Maria Angelica. He represents that their mothers had but few advantages fitting them for city society, and had resolved that their daughters should not suffer in the same way. The young ladies had already a good knowledge of the multiplication table, and could read well enough, as they never would become teachers. Any knowledge of the sciences and mathematics would be wholly unappreciated in the higher circles of society in which they would move; and he desired them to pursue only the ornamental and fashionable branches. They would like to study the easier parts of English grammar, omitting the analysis and other difficulties. They would take lessons on the piano, if they