later on, is to impair the humanity of the children. They desire nothing of this sort, and they ask that a workshop be connected with every school, for no other reason than that a chemical laboratory is connected with every college.

FELIX ADLER.

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE EDUCATION.

EXPERIENCE seems to point out no one plan of education as decidedly the best; it only says, I think, that public education is the best where it answers. But then the question is, Will it answer with one's own boy? and if it fails, is not the failure complete? It becomes a question of particulars: a very good private tutor would tempt me to try private education, or a very good public school, with connections amongst the boys at it, might induce me to enter upon public. Still there is much chance in the matter; for a school may change its character greatly, even with the same master, by the prevalence of a good or bad set of boys; and this no caution can guard against. But I should advise anything rather than a private school of above thirty boys. Large private schools, I think, are the worst possible system; the choice lies between public schools and an education whose character may be strictly private and domestic.

THOMAS ARNOLD,

WHOEVER Wishes to study with success, must exercise himself in these three things: in getting clear views of a subject; in fixing in his memory what he has understood; and in producing something from his own

resources.

AGRICOLA.

THE informed man in the world may be said to be always surrounded by what is known and friendly to him, while the ignorant man is as one in a land of strangers and enemies.

NEIL ARNOTT.

A SUCCESS.

THE negro has falsified the predictions of his enemies, and dispelled the fears of his friends. They said he would give himself to riot and plunder; but he earned the gratitude of the South by his fidelity to the family and the plantation, while his master was fighting against his freedom. They said the freedman would not work, but he raised in one year nearly four million bales of cotton. They ridiculed "Sambo" in uniform, but the steady lines at Petersburg and the charge at Fort Wagner attest his heroism.

What grander enterprise could there be than to take up the cause of a race like this, the pariahs of the peoples, distrusting their old guides and suspecting their present leaders, and prepare for them with timely zeal, and by wise methods, an army of educators who shall give tone to their character, direction to their ideas, and by moulding the now plastic material, secure a well-laid foundation, upon which the workmen of the future shall build to the honor of the race and of the nation, and to the glory of God?

S. C. ARMSTRONG.

NEWS-ROOMS AND LIBRARIES.

IF you wish to be living always in the present, if you wish to have the din of its contentions always in your

ears, and the flush of its fleeting interests always on your brow, above all, if you wish to have your opinions ready-made for you, without the trouble of inquiry, and without the discipline of thought, then, I say, come from your counting-house and spend the few hours of leisure which you may have in exhausting the columns of the daily press; but if your ambition be a nobler one, if your aim be higher, you will find yourselves often passing from the door of the news-room into that of the library, - from the present to the past, from the living to the dead, to commune with those thoughts which should have stood the test of time, and which have been raised to the shelves of the library by common consent of all men, because they do not contain mere floating information, but instruction for all generations and for all times.

POLISHED MARBLE.

DUKE OF ARGYLL.

I CONSIDER a human soul without education like marble in a quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which, without such. helps, are never able to make their appearance.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

ALWAYS trust, therefore, for the overcoming of a difficulty, not to long-continued study after you have once got bewildered, but to repeated trials, at intervals.

FRANCIS BACON.

MUSIC AND THE GREEKS.

As gymnastics was intended to harmonize the powers of the body, so music was to order and to regulate the soul. . . . A Greek who could not distinguish between semi-tones, or even between quarter-tones, would have been thought as ignorant as a classical scholar who quoted Homer with a false quantity. Also, they were far more sensitive than laymen usually are among ourselves to the essential characteristics of different keys. We have abundant evidence that every Greek boy was carefully trained in the theory and practice of the musical art, and that it was regarded by masters of all schools as of the first importance to intellect and morality. Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes agree in this. Music was not only the gymnastic of the ear and the voice, but of the spirit, and the foundation of all the higher life. Its rhythm and harmony penetrated into the soul and worked powerfully upon it. In union with poetry it led the soul to virtue and inspired it with courage. It has been well said that if a Greek youth had by continuous practice become stronger than a bull, more truthful than the Godhead, and wiser than the most learned Egyptian priest, his fellow-citizens would shrug their shoulders at him with contempt if he did not possess what a series of music and gymnastics can alone give, -a sense of gracefulness and proportion.

OSCAR BROWNING.

FICTION AND EDUCATION.

THE numerous works of genius that take the form of Fiction, together with poetry in the more narrow sense,

are undoubtedly an education in themselves. The force, elegance, and affluence of diction in general, the refinements and delicacies of conversational style in particular, the portraying of character, and the depicting of scenery and life, the wise maxims wittily expressed, not to mention the inspiriting ideals, cannot go for nothing on the mind of the reader. They are efficacious, however, just in proportion to previous culture; with a vast majority of fiction-readers the effect is barely to be traced; these in their haste extract only the plot, sentiment, and passion, and let all the rest escape them. To gain the full impression of a work of the highest genius demands slow perusal, and a considerable pause before entering on any other.

ALEXANDER BAIN.

CHAIRS OF DIDACTICS.

THE establishment in the great institutions of America and Europe of a chair for the professional education of teachers, marks a new departure in education. Colleges and universities are conservative and exclusive. The professors are absorbed in their subjects, to the exclusion of methods. Thus it results that, as to methods, our public schools are far in advance of our colleges. In this case the reform must come from within. The maintenance of a chair of didactics is destined to revolutionize college methods. Such students as elect teaching will go out trained for their work, and prepared to fill the best positions. While normal departments have necessarily and always proved failures, the plan now pursued in the universities of Michigan, Iowa,