and hold the attention so that the intellect may promptly respond to any draft made upon it. Now history is first a great storehouse of facts. The teaching of history must be begun by teaching facts, not inferences. Philosophical formulæ robbed of all personality should never be taught as elementary history; and facts once taught should be so taught as to be readily recalled. Yes, the facts of history must be memorized. Thus, Columbus as he appears upon the stage of history is a fact. That Columbus discovered America is an important fact. That Columbus discovered America on the 12th day of October, 1492, is also an important fact. Growing out of this central event in the life of Columbus, the man, his work and his circumstances all become important.

Now there is an idea which is quite prevalent that elementary teaching should ape the methods of the impressionist school of painting that an effect should be produced upon the mind not by accurately drawing in every detail of the picture but by a hurried series of daubs of color which from a distance produce the general effect of truth. I am wholly opposed to any such method of elementary teaching. Like anatomy, history has a bony framework, a framework fully ossified and strongly knit together. We want to know when and where Columbus was born; who his parents were; what their occupation; what his early training; how and when he embraced the idea of a western voyage; what were the conditions under which he began the voyage; what the circumstances of his voyage; its results; its influence upon the times; his subsequent career; and how his life influenced the world. These facts reduced to absolute accuracy should be taught specifically, and they should be committed to memory. In the future the child with a well trained memory will have no difficulty in building up a broad knowledge of the world and man's history in it from the various information which will gather round the important points which he has stored up in his memory. Thus, let us say he has the date 1446 as the birth of Columbus, and the date 1492 as that of the discovery of America. After a while in the study of the history of England his attention is called to the bril liant campaigns of Henry V, of Lancaster, in France and he remembers that Prince Henry the Navigator, one of the men who led the way for Columbus, was, like Prince Hal, the grandson of old John of Gaunt. He reads his Shakespeare and remembers that Falstaff was a contemporary of the great discoverer. As he traces the

history of the Wars of the Roses, ending in the seating of Henry VII on the throne, he remarks the character of the preparation in England for her period of discovery. Crossing over into France he finds a shattered kingdom and comprehends why France was so slow to enter upon voyages of discovery. Coming into Spain he remarks that it was in January, 1492, that the last Moorish king breathed his last sigh as he took his last long glance over the beautiful land of Grenada, when the triumphant Spaniard spread his banners over the fair city which for seven hundred years (circa 780-1492) had been lost to Christendom. He readily sees in this great triumph the immediate cause for the support given to Columbus and is able to understand how it was that Spain sent so many adventurous characters, trained in the Moorish wars and then released from occupation, to America. Passing into Italy he finds that at this time the Italian republics which had passed through a brilliant career were sinking under civil wars and becoming a prey to foreign countries. He begins to understand why it was that the once proud republic of Genoa sent Columbus to honor Spain, and Florence her Americus Vespuccius to honor Portugal, and Venice her Cabots to honor England. The Italian sailors, boldest and best of seamen, scattered by the Italian misfortunes of the day are seen sailing for every other nation and the peculiarity of Columbus sailing in a Spanish ship ceases to be remarkable.

It is necessary that all of these facts, circumstances and conditions shall be memorized. I do not mean that there shall be mere learning by rote, but I do mean that names and dates, not few but many, must be committed to memory, and this for two reasons ; first, what is mere childish memorizing becomes a habit, and where the child once learned by rote he afterwards learns by instinct. If there is one thing above another that is annoying in an historical work it is a scarcity of dates. We want not merely years, but months, and days both of the month and of the week, and often half the tale is left untold if the hour of the day is not mentioned. Who can understand the battle of Waterloo, for instance, if he is not told that a shower delayed the movement of Napoleon's artillery until ten o'clock in the forenoon of that memorable 18th day of June, when he proposed to advance his batteries at five o'clock in the morning? This looking for specific statements of time is a part of the habit of having a mental picture of the circumstances accompanying any given act. Just as the mathematician.

finds numbers eloquent the historian finds dates. So it is with the lawyer with regard to cases. He wants not only principles cited, but he wants the name of the case in which the principle was so laid down. Many young lawyers think it a hardship to commit to memory by name a few hundred cases and yet they learn in experience that a certain number of cases are of such great importance that they must constantly be cited by name. The same is true in regard to the teaching of dates.

Of course this is fundamental, primary, elementary. The outery against dates arose not because dates are unessential but because nothing but dates was taught in an earlier day. We want to teach facts first. In history the order of time is of the first importance. We want to teach them, first, when a thing happened; then how it happened. This involves the place where, that is to say, the Geography in its broadest sense, including the personnelle of the actors introducing us to such inquiries as those of race, education, social relations, personal appearance—including dress, etc. In connection with Columbus we consider, first, that he was an Italian.. Just here we generally must contend against the impression made upon children by the Italians with whom they are thrown in daily contact. In the next place, we notice that Columbus came of a family of wool-combers and in that connection observe that wool-combing was an honorable trade carried on by a rich guild in the republican city of Genoa, and that Columbus had some educational advantages and very probably for a time studied in the University of Pavia. Our attention is then called to the difference in dress of four hundred years ago, and particularly to the habit of all people above a certain station of almost habitually wearing arms and armor, so that when Columbus draws his sword, for instance, he is not necessarily either a soldier or expecting to fight, but flourishing his sword much as a gentleman would wave his cane at the present day, and when he doffs his helmet it is no more than the taking off of a dress hat in any ceremony of to-day.

When we have considered all of the res gestae, as the lawyer calls them, the attendant circumstances of any event, it is important to point out, even to the youngest children, the Why; tracing the causes which led up to the event. And also the results, showing how profoundly such an event as the discovery of America affected the world. Thus Columbus did not originate the idea of finding Asia by a westerly voyage. It was the common property

of his age. The letters of Toscanelli are the best summary of the views which Columbus embraced. And Columbus referred to them among other things as the basis of his view. He acted on the soundest judgment of the best informed contemporaries. His praise is due to his having acted. As faith without works is dead, so the faith of his predecessors and contemporaries was barren of results. But Columbus gave the world a new hemisphere. Now these facts, circumstances and conditions must be taught in this order: We must teach the fact-first, its time, then its place, and then its circumstances, and then we must build from fact to fact, from event to event, from period to period by as close and well-connected a chain as possible. But what we want in our elementary teaching is solid facts, well memorized, and not too much. speculation and inference. With all due respect to the average teacher I may safely say that elementary-school conclusions of a speculative character have generally to be unlearned, the principal reason being that historical writers rather than historians are relied on in most cases by the teacher. In my lectures in college on the constitution and government of the United States I am absolutely unable to proceed if the students do not already know When, Where and Why the Mayflower came to America, the English settled in Virginia; the Dutch in New York, and so on; when the various colonial governments came into being, what was their character, and who were the important governors, and what their principal public acts were, and so on. It is all very well for a boy to know the difference between the Roundhead of Massachusetts and the Cavalier of Virginia, but what good purpose does it serve if he cannot explain why the Roundhead settled in Massachusetts and why the Cavalier in Virginia, and how can he explain this if he does not know the date of the settlement? Let us have facts, and facts backed up by dates; being quite sure that where these things are thoroughly known the time will come when they will find their application; while, if mere formulæ are taught we are likely to have a steadily fading impression.

EDWA

EDWARD THRING.

G. WOLCOTT BROOKS, DORCHESTER.

DWARD THRING was an educational pioneer. He was one of the first to note the contrast between culture and cramming. In his great work as Headmaster of Uppingham School (England), he demonstrated that the mind is an intellectual power to be trained, not a truck to be loaded.

As he entered upon his work as an educator, he was eager to perform the experiment of managing boys by wooing rather than by whipping, and to illustrate before the world the idea that juvenile minds are not knowledge-shops, to be stuffed with mental furniture, ready made by their instructors. Thring was also aglow with enthusiasm to prove that the chief object of a great school is "strength of mind and character, and that any process that contributes to give this kind of strength is true, even though little knowledge is gained by it."

Thus he emphasized training as the object of true education. Mere knowledge was made tributary to that end. "Education," says Thring, "means training for life; life, not lessons, is what has to be dealt with, or lessons only so far as they inspirit life, enrich it and give it new powers. Nothing can be said before the distinction between the strong mind and the stuffed mind, between training and cram, is thoroughly recognized. A teacher is not a parrotmaster, not a truck-loader at a goods station. A teacher's object is not to load up his pupil with facts, but to train him how to get facts for himself. The teacher's aim is to create producing power." One of the highest functions of an instructor is to impart himself to his pupils ; to enkindle in their minds his enthusiasm, and to make contagious his own scholarly habits. In the Uppingham school, every student was enthused with the burning desire of their master to illustrate the idea that education is not cramming for an examination, but training for life.

In the execution of his high design, Thring employed model methods. He was determined that the boys should do their own thinking. Sometimes he would startle a dull lad with Socratic queries, beginning thus,—