In preparing to teach, study and practice should be combined. The study should have for its object the branches of learning to be taught in the schools, together with the principles of teaching; the practice should consist in a thorough application of the principles.

The application should be made in a well-organized school, if possible, where the pupil teacher will be permitted to do what he must have the power of doing in his own future school. It should be remembered that the art of teaching is acquired by the act of teaching, and that no one should attempt to practise the art by his own strength until he has had a successful experience under the direction of skilled supervision. The training a teacher needs is that which will enable him to control himself. This means a command of all his faculties, such as will make him a reliable thinker on all the subjects he is called to present to his pupils, and able to express his thoughts with facility and by the use of well-authorized terms. It means such an education of the conscience and the taste as will enable him to detect and choose what is right in actions and beautiful in things; such as will lead him to have a proper regard for justice, for personal appearance, for manners, and for all those elements of conduct that constitute good behavior.

Strong emotions are the signs of a strong intellect, and they are necessary to the existence of a vigorous and persistent will; but, when they become masters, rational acts are impossible. Many teachers, with an abundance of good qualities, have failed for want of control over their own emotional natures. Some are impulsive in making their intellectual and moral judgments, and in this way lose the respect of their pupils. Some are morbidly conscientious, and worry their pupils into despair by their exactions. Others are affected by prejudices, and a disposition to criticise rather than approve.

It is within the province of special training, to fortify the mind against falling into mistakes which occur often with those who have the best intentions, and who labor the most earnestly for the highest success. If a teacher is trained to discover how much a loss of sleep, poor health, or a cloudy day has to do with his emotions, and with his judgments of the moral qualities of his pupils, he will compel himself to wait until his sleep is made up, his digestion has improved, and the bright sun has broken through the clouds, before he will attempt to inflict

merited punishment on what appears to be stupidity and malice; and then, when his own physical and mental machinery comes into good working order again, how glad he will be that his power of self-control has saved him from doing irreparable injustice to the best and brightest pupils to be found in all the schools! It is because the teacher is to stamp something of his own mental and moral image on the minds of his pupils, that he must be a model worthy of their imitation.

To say nothing of knowledge and methods of teaching, no teacher with a well-trained intellect, a good heart, and a strong will, can fail of success. But the highest success, however, requires that he add to health, to knowledge, and to training, an irresistible enthusiasm : not that mere animal feeling which expresses itself in bluster, without regard to any rational cause for its existence, but that deep, stirring emotion which arises from an over-mastering perception and love of the truth,such a feeling as led Socrates to forget his sleep and his food whenever he found opportunity to teach to others the nature of virtue, the definition of temperance, or the reasons for belief in the immortality of the soul; such as led Pestalozzi to reject all thoughts of wealth and fame, and to spend his life in contriving a system of instruction that would make prosperous and happy the beggar children collected into his schools; or such as made Agassiz say that he had no time to waste in making money.

Enthusiasm communicates itself to all who happen to be in its presence. It throws a charm over the driest subjects of thought and the severest labor. It produces conviction before one knows the reasons for his belief; and it leads one to an intense exercise of his powers, from the pleasures that attend the exercise.

The results of the teacher's work are absolutely necessary to the life and progress of the race. If, then, he shall perform it with that efficiency and spirit which good health, sufficient knowledge, a proper training, and a large enthusiasm will enable him to command, he will show by the results that he has the requisites of a good teacher.

Necessity of Right Early Training.

When the child begins to live his spiritual life, his mind has no facility in the exertion of its active power, nor has it any tendency to act in any particular manner.

As soon as the mind exercises itself in thinking, feeling, and choosing, it begins to acquire a facility in performing these acts, and there will accompany the facility an inclination to continue to do what is easily done. This facility and inclination constitute habit.

We say of very young children that their mental faculties are undeveloped, meaning that they have not yet formed habits of acting. The capacity of the mind for forming habits renders mental development possible.

The one cause of development of the faculties is exercise. From this truth may be derived one of the fundamental principles of a true method of teaching. From the same truth may also be derived an idea of the importance of, early training.

If the powers are developed by use, it follows that a method of teaching must be devised which will present right occasions for their proper exercise.

As the kind and degree of activity the mind exerts during the early developing period of its existence, determine its character, it must be placed in care of a skilful director from the first.

He will study to find, if possible, what ideas the mind in its early existence is adapted to form, what emotions its natural activity will produce, and what choices its natural acts of thinking and feeling will prompt it to make.

No unnatural interference by a controlling power must be allowed to defeat the ends which nature has planned for the child to secure for himself.

There is a period in every child's early life that the educator should improve in promoting the physical growth of the young being placed under his care.

At first the child is to live a physical life, and be controlled in his movements largely by the animal principle of action. this time ideas will spring up in his mind as the material world is brought in contact with his senses. His emotions will be sympathetic rather than rational, and his acts will owe their origin to the impulses of his nature rather than to his reason. But notwithstanding all this it should not be forgotten that the infant mind will begin to take on its character as soon as it begins to move itself in producing its mental states.

For this reason the spontaneous activity of childhood should be directed, not forced, but simply directed, into those forms

which will produce some useful elementary knowledge, or at least a thirst for knowledge, and lay the sure foundation of a harmonious development of all the faculties.

We need, then, a system of training which shall precede the formal processes to which the child is usually subjected on entering the primary school. The true kindergarten seems to offer this training.

I say a true kindergarten; for, unless kindergarten training is philosophical in its nature and methods, it will be adapted to do more harm than can be done by the application of unnatural training in any one of our present system of schools.

This is due to the fact that the infant mind yields readily to external influences, and that early impressions are everlasting. For these reasons, care should be taken that the youthful powers are not checked in their spontaneous growth by arbitrary control, nor stimulated to premature activity by unnatural incentives, nor suffered to become warped in their character by a neglect to direct them to a proper and healthful exercise.

The young yield readily to authority, and are directed easily by example. It follows that those who are to direct youthful development towards intellectual and moral character must themselves be what they would have their pupils become.

They should be so acquainted with the laws in accordance with which the infant powers unfold themselves, that they may be able to co-operate with nature by removing all artificial obstructions, and supplying the conditions to a natural and easy development.

We are yet hardly aware in this country of how much consequence it is to the future progress of the child, that he be permitted from the first to grow up in the presence of wise and good instructors.

If the children from their earliest years are the objects of right influences, and are led to the natural exercise of their faculties, we have a right to expect that they will become fitted for a happy and successful life.

When the child enters the primary school, he will be put to reading, spelling, constructing words into simple sentences and his sentences into simple discourse. He will combine numbers, practise singing and drawing, and have presented to him a systematic course of lessons on the qualities of objects. He will be made subject to such rules of conduct as have for their

object the right activity of the intellect, sensibility, and will, such activity as should ultimately lead to the power of complete self-control.

For this work, the child, if possible, should have a previous preparation.

Without violence to his youthful nature, he may be so directed in those exercises that have amusement for their end, as to enter, at about seven years of age, the primary school free from bad habits, and with his powers trained to self-activity, and his mind stored with a rich collection of facts. He will then be ready for rapid progress in those studies which the primary schools are designed to teach.

If all our children could pass from a well-conducted kindergarten into their courses of study, I am sure it would at once appear that a foundation had been laid for rapid and successful progress.

It is known by those who have made the kindergarten system of instruction an intelligent study, and have had experience in the results produced, that children trained under its influences are more readily controlled, that they are superior in intelligence to children who enter the elementary schools without previous training, that they observe with more accuracy, that they have a more eager thirst for knowledge, and that they have a much better command of language.

If this is true, then the period of elementary instruction, as now established, might be shortened, without subtracting from the good results now secured.

It would be well if the spirit of the kindergarten could be carried into the public schools.

All objects of study, or adequate representatives of the objects, should be brought into the presence of the children for their observation, and they should be permitted to obtain a knowledge of them by an exertion of their own active power. Here, too, as in the kindergarten, the teacher should do nothing but direct.

He should establish the conditions of study, and then leave the pupil to work out for himself his own knowledge and his own discipline.

In some modern schools, the ancient custom of assigning lessons from books to be studied, and committed to memory by the children, has been partially abandoned; but in the place of