thirty girls of fifteen or sixteen years. It was recess when we entered the room, the windows were open, and the thirty girls were flying about and chattering as only school-girls can. Unlike

the other class, these girls almost without exception looked healthy, and many were pretty, having the rich complexions and dark eyes which are the chief charms of Swiss women. Presently the hour for recitation arrived; and without any bell, but with many sh-sh's from the teacher, order was gradually restored, -very gradually, for these girls were full of life to the ends of their fingers, and the teacher had yet to learn that system is the sine qua non, the end and aim of school. But the current once turned, all this animation was given to the lesson. It was not a quiet class, the sh-sh's were frequently repeated, but it was a wide-awake and thoughtful one. There was not one listless or inattentive pupil. The lesson was in Commercial Geography, and wines and spirituous liquors was the subject for the day. The appearance and qualities of the principal varieties of wine were described, and the vineyards from which they are produced named and pointed out on the map. (There were three maps and a blackboard in this room.) Then whiskey, brandy, etc., were treated in the same way. In spite of the lack of "advanced ideas," this exercise was as perfect as any it ever was my good fortune to hear. Again the last half of the hour was devoted to the lesson for the next day. This time the mistress read it from her manuscript, and the pupils copied it carefully with ink.

From No. 2, we went to the gymnasium, where the youngest class were developing their muscle. This was another large dingy room entirely unventilated, with an earth floor covered with tan bark. The little ones were dressed in gymnasium costume, and looked like a troop of little monkeys gambolling on their native heath. There was no music, and seemed to be no regard to grace of motion, but the children took much the same kind of exercise under the master's direction that they would have had in romping by themselves.

In the gymnasium noon surprised us. We were glad to escape from that prison-like atmosphere, and came away meditating on many things.

The results of this and similar teaching, as I have seen them

in Geneva, are noticeable. Genevese women of the middle class are sensible, energetic, and accomplished. They know how to darn stockings, almost all speak three languages (a knowledge of five or six is not rare), are good musicians, and converse agreeably on a great variety of topics. It is true they "do not see the use of" algebra or geometry, and generally imagine that a knowledge of science would destroy the poetry of nature, but their perfect command and agreeable use of what they have learned is admirable. Their education is narrow but much more thorough than ours.

It is plainly to be seen, that a visit to a Swiss school is calculated to swell with satisfaction the mind of an " American citizen." Indeed, all foreign institutions are so well calculated to inflate that highly expansive organ, that they seem to have been foreordained and set in motion by a kind Providence for that special purpose. A traveller from that happy land which we are fond of telling Europeans is "a great country, sir!" is immediately struck with the dulness of the Swiss mind. Over three hundred years has this school system been in operation, and it has never yet dawned upon any Swiss patriot that it might be made a vast machine for the benefit of publishers. No one has invented a beautifully expansive "series," by which arithmetic, grammar, and geography may be made to "drag their slow length along" through an entire school course. But aside from this remarkable but excusable obtuseness to self-interest, what lack of mechanical ingenuity! While young Boston and Chicago, and many other American towns, can point with pride to a system of machinery as perfect as that of a paper-mill, where the raw material of vastly different kinds is all put through exactly the same processes, and is finally turned out in immaculate sheets, exactly alike, all very thin, all nicely ruled in straight lines, but otherwise blank, these dull Swiss have hardly anything that deserves to be called a system. They have no two schools exactly alike, and the dominant idea in all seems to be, not to make model brain-mills of the schools, but to make model men and women of the children.

The more one studies this mournful lack of "progressiveness in Swiss schools, the more one is struck with their results, or

with the results which they certainly have no mean share in producing. The average Swiss seem well adapted to the world. into which the school launches them. They are successful in whatever they undertake, whether agriculture, watch-making, banking, or a religious contest; and Helvetia points with pride to a long roll-call of illustrious men who have been successful in science. They are honest. In some way, to some more "progressive people,-alas! unknown, - they are taught to think being better than seeming, morality better than money; and though they are an acquisitive people, fond of financial pursuits, their business annals boast no synonymes for Fisk, Gould, Erie, Tammany, or Credit Mobilier. They are a patriotic people; their national life has been one long struggle for national liberty; and though their business energy takes them to every quarter of the globe, they always love to call themselves Swiss, and almost always go home to enjoy the fortune which they have won in foreign lands.

Of course we Yankees have nothing to learn from foreign school systems. Are we not intending to instruct and edify all Europe, assembled at the Vienna exhibition, by a model school-house, with patent doors, patent ventilators, patent desks, patent slates, and patent everything else up to the teacher? But, from an antiquarian point of view, these Swiss schools are really interesting to us; and as fixed points from which we can reckon our “remarkable progress," they really become a pleasing tribute to the American Eagle, as such this Yankee woman has ventured to give this short account of one of them to the readers of "The Teacher." L. N. H.

THE END OF EDUCATION.

"I CALL therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.

"But here the main skill and groundwork will be to temper them such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflamed with a study of learning and the admiration of virtue, stirred up with

high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages, that they may despise and scorn all their childish and ill-taught qualities, to delight in manly and liberal exercises; which he who hath the art and proper eloquence to catch them with, what with mild and effectual persuasion, and what with the intimation of some fear if need be, but chiefly by his own example, might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage; infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardor as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men."

So wrote the noblest of the men of the English Commonwealth, the one most learned, and most truly influenced by that which he deemed the end of learning. What a magnificent nation that would be, whose schools should train their pupils to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices of peace and of war. And for this end are public schools established, this is the warrant for expending public moneys upon them. It is for the interest of each citizen of the Commonwealth, that every person in the state be so trained, that he shall be influenced by the noblest motives to do the best work that it lies in him to do, whether for the public or for his own private good. In a republic especially no man stands alone, no man is free from governmental responsibility. And, for the most part, the man works on in the direction which his early training has given him. If that has appealed to the best impulses of the man, they will influence him and shape his deeds ever after. Pre-eminently, then, is this a subject for the thoughtful consideration of the public school-teachers of a republic. They are daily shaping the future of the country. The courses of study, the purposes to be attained in the judgment of the teacher, the plans he forms to accomplish those purposes, the methods of working which the children are taught, the objects for which they are led to work, the motives by which they are allured or compelled to do the daily work, all shape the characters of the coming men and women, the future citizens.

That a man should be able to perform skilfully all the things which he is able to do, requires much training in methods of working; that he may do such things justly and magnanimously, requires a perception of the end as well as the means; and this perception of the end will soon make the means flexible in his

hands, so that, if there be a wiser way than that which he has been taught, he will reach after and find it. A training which should regard the first exclusively, would make a person stupid and unthinking, easily duped, and it would also tend to keep him on the lowest round of the ladder of civilization. That which regards the second alone, will render him a generous and thoughtful but an unpractical man.

It should be the aim of the teacher to combine these two, that the halves may supplement each other, and form the whole rounded man. Could this be accomplished in our public schools, what a glorious future would open in long perspective for our country! If in each method of school-working the underlying principle were brought to light, and the child could see the unchanging truth under the shifting method, could find the firm foundation on which his mind might rest, he would inevitably be led to distinguish form from substance in each subject taught, and to look for the substance ever afterwards. It would be the beginning of a habit, the first step in a life-long series. The boy would grow up into a man incapable of being deceived by a form of words, of being the easy dupe of superficial schemers. The habit of looking for the principle, the truth beneath the outward seeming, would prevent him from mistaking falsehood for honesty, and he would, at least, call things by their right names.

I think it may be said of the New-England school of the past, that, whatever great and unpardonable defects of method, or of courses of study, the modern progressive teacher may charge it with, it did do something towards training living, thoughtful men and women. I earnestly desire that we should be able to keep that still as the most prominent characteristic of our schools. There was very little of system in those schools. For the older boys and girls, the course was optional, a feature of late transplanted to some of our colleges, with good effect, it is said. The change from the old school to the system of to-day has been gradual. First, came grades of schools in the towns, with courses of study for the different grades. Then followed examinations for advance from lower to higher schools; then comparisons of the schools of different towns; and so attention has been gradually concentrated upon the methods of teaching, upon the courses of study, the things most obvious, and therefore the