vious characters and connections, and more fastidious as to their intellectual qualifications and acquirements.

When circumstances thus combine to prevent the residence of the students in the training school for a longer period than a year and a half, the inquiries as to previous character cannot be conducted with too much care, and the first month of training should, under any circumstances, be regarded as probationary.

Under these arrangements, also, the impression produced upon the characters of the students during their residence is of paramount importance.

They are commonly selected from an humble sphere. They are the sons of small tradesmen, of bailiffs, of servants, or of superior mechanics. Few have received any education, except that given in a common parochial school. They read and write very imperfectly; are unable to indite a letter correctly; and are seldom skillful, even in the first four rules of arithmetic. Their biblical knowledge is meager and inaccurate, and all their conceptions, not less on religious than on other subjects, are vague and confused, even when they are not also very limited or erroneous. Their habits have seldom prepared them for the severely regular life of the Normal School, much less for the strenuous effort of attention and application required by the daily routine of instruction. Such concentration of the mind would soon derange the health, if the course of training did not provide moderate daily exercise in the garden, at proper intervals. The mental torpor, which at first is an obstacle to improvement, generally passes away in about three months, and from that period the student makes rapid prog

ress in the studies of the school.

These attainments, humble though they be, might prove dangerous to the character of the student, if his intellectual development were the chief concern of the masters.

How easy it would be for him to form an overweening estimate of his knowledge and ability, must be apparent, when it is remembered that he will meas? ure his learning by the standard of that possessed by his own friends and neighbors. He will find himself suddenly raised by a brief course of training to the position of a teacher and example. If his mind were not thoroughly penetrated by religious principle, or if a presumptuous or mercenary tone had been given to his character, he might go forth to bring discredit upon education, by exhibiting a precocious vanity, an insubordinate spirit, or a selfish ambition. He might be come, not the gentle and pious guide of the children of the poor, but a hireling into whose mind had sunk the doubts of the skeptic; in whose heart was the worm of social discontent; and who had changed the docility of ignorance and dullness, for the restless impatience of a vulgar and conceited sciolist.

In the formation of the character of the schoolmaster, the discipline of the training school should be so devised as to prepare him for the modest respectability of his lot. He is to be a Christian teacher, following Him who said, "He that will be my disciple, let him take up his cross." Without the spirit of selfdenial, he is nothing. His reward must be in his work. There should be great simplicity in the life of such a man.

Obscure and secluded schools need masters of a contented spirit, to whom the training of the children committed to their charge has charms sufficient to concentrate their thoughts and exertions on the humble sphere in which they live, notwithstanding the privations of a life but little superior to the level of the surrounding peasantry. When the scene of the teacher's exertions is in a neighborhood which brings him into association with the middle and upper classes of society, his emoluments will be greater, and he will be surrounded by temptations which, in the absence of a suitable preparation of mind, might rob him of that humility and gentleness which are among the most necessary qualifications of the teacher of a common school.

In the training school, habits should be formed consistent with the modesty of his future life. On this account, we attach peculiar importance to the discipline which we have established at Battersea. Only one servant, besides a cook, has been kept for the domestic duties of the household. The whole household work, with the exception of the scouring of the floors and cooking, is performed by the students; and they likewise not only milk and clean the cows, feed and tend the pigs, but have charge of the stores, wait upon each other, and cultivate the garden. We cannot too emphatically state our opinion that no portion of this

work could be omitted, without a proportionate injury to that contentment of spirit, without which the character of the student is liable to be overgrown with the errors we have described.

The garden-work also serves other important ends. Some exercise and recreation from the scholastic labors are indispensable. Nevertheless, a large portion of the day cannot be devoted to it, and when three or four hours only can be spared, care should be taken that the whole of this time is occupied by moderate and healthful exertion in the open air. A period of recreation employed according to the discretion of the students would be liable to abuse. It might often be spent in listless sauntering, or in violent exertion. Or if a portion of the day were thus withdrawn from the observation of the masters of the school, it would prove a period in which associations might be formed among the students inconsistent with the discipline; and habits might spring up to counteract the influence of the instruction and admonition of the masters. In so brief a period of training, it is necessary that the entire conduct of the student should be guided by a superior mind.

Not only, by the daily labor of the garden, are the health and morals of the school influenced, but habits are formed consistent with the student's future lot. It is well both for his own health, and for the comfort of his family, that the schoolmaster should know how to grow his garden stuff, and should be satisfied with innocent recreation near his home.

We have also adhered to the frugal diet which we at first selected for the school. Some little variety has been introduced, but we attach great importance to the students being accustomed to a diet so plain and economical, and to arrangements in their dormitories so simple and devoid of luxury, that in after life they will not in an humble school be visited with a sense of privation, when their scanty fare and mean furniture are compared with the more abundant food and comforts of the training school. We have therefore met every rising complaint respecting either the quantity or quality of the food, or the humble accommodation in the dormitories, with explanations of the importance of forming, in the school, habits of frugality, and of the paramount duty of nurturing a patient spirit, to meet the future privations of the life of a teacher of the poor.

Our experience also leads us to attach much importance to simplicity and propriety of dress. For the younger pupils we had, on this account, prepared a plain dark dress of rifle green, and a working dress of fustian cord. As respects the adults, we have felt the importance of checking the slightest tendency to peculiarity of dress, lest it should degenerate into foppery. We have endeavored to impress on the students that the dress and the manners of the master of a school for the poor should be decorous, but that the prudence of his life should likewise find expression in their simplicity. There should be no habit nor external sign of self-indulgence or vanity.

On the other hand, the master is to be prepared for a life of laborious exertion. He must, therefore, form habits of early rising, and of activity and persevering industry. In the winter, before it is light, the household work must be finished, and the school-rooms prepared by the students for the duties of the day. One hour and a half is thus occupied. After this work is accomplished, one class must assemble winter and summer, at a quarter to seven o'clock, for instruction. The day is filled with the claims of duty requiring the constant exertion of mind and body, until, at half past nine, the household retire to rest.

By this laborious and frugal life, economy of management is reconciled with the efficiency both of the moral and intellectual training of the school, and the master goes forth into the world humble, industrious, and instructed.

But into the student's character higher sentiments must enter, if we rightly conceive the mission of the master of a school for the poor. On the religious condition of the household, under the blessing of God, depends the cultivation of that religious feeling, without which the spirit of self-sacrifice cannot take its right place among the motives which ought to form the mainspring of a schoolmaster's activity.

There is a necessity for incessant vigilance in the management of a training school. The principal should be wise as a serpent, while the gentleness of his discipline, and his affectionate solicitude for the well-being of his pupils, should encourage the most unreserved communications with him. Much of his leisure

should be devoted to private interviews with the students, and employed in instilling into their minds high principles of action. A cold and repulsive air of authority may preserve the appearance of order, regularity, and submission in the household; but these will prove delusive signs if the principal does not possess the respect and confidence, not to say the affections, of his charge. He should be most accessible, and unwearied in the patience with which he listens to confessions and inquiries. While it is felt to be impossible that he should enter into any compromise with evil, there should be no such severity in his tone of rebuke as to check that confidence which seeks guidance from a superior intelligence. As far as its relation to the principal only is concerned, every fault should be restrained and corrected by a conviction of the pain and anxiety which it causes to an anxious friend, rather than by the fear of a too jealous authority. Thus conscience will gradually be roused by the example of a master, respected for his purity, and loved for his gentleness, and inferior sentiments will be replaced by motives derived from the highest source.

Where so much has to be learned, and where, among other studies, so much religious knowledge must be acquired, there is danger that religion should be regarded chiefly as a subject for the exercise of the intellect. A speculative religious knowledge, without those habits and feelings which are the growth of deeply-seated religious convictions, may be a dangerous acquisition to a teacher of the young. How important, therefore, is it that the religious services of the household should become the means of cultivating a spirit of devotion, and that the religious instruction of the school should be so conducted as not merely to inform the memory, but to master the convictions and to interest the feelings! Religion is not merely to be taught in the school-it must be the element in which the students live.

This religious life is to be nurtured by the example, by the public instruction of the principal, and by his private counsel and admonition; by the religious services of the household; by the personal intercourse of the students, and the habits of private meditation and devotion which they are led to form; by the public worship of the church, and by the acts of charity and self-denial which belong to their future calling.

How important is it that the principal should embody such an example of purity and elevation of character, of gentleness of manners, and of unwearied benevolence, as to increase the power of his teaching, by the respect and conviction which wait upon a consistent life! Into the religious services of the household he should endeavor to inspire such a spirit of devotion as would spread itself through the familiar life, and hallow every season of retirement. The management of the village school affords opportunities for cultivating habits of kindness and patience. The students should be instructed in the organization and conduct of Sunday-schools; they should be trained in the preparation of the voluntary teachers by previous instruction; in the visitation of the absent children; in the management of the clothing and sick clubs and libraries attached to such schools. They should be accustomed to the performance of those parochial duties in which the schoolmaster may lighten the burden of the clergyman. For this purpose, they should learn to keep the accounts of the benefit club. They should instruct and manage the village choir, and should learn to play the organ. While in attendance on the village school, it is peculiarly important that they should accompany the master in his visits to children detained at home by sickness, and should listen to the words of counsel and comfort which he may then administer; they should also attend him when his duty requires a visit to the parents of some refractory or indolent scholar, and should fearn how to secure their aid in the correction of the faults of the child.

Before he leaves the training school, the student should have formed a distinct conception, from precept and practice, how his example, his instruction, and his works of charity and religion, ought to promote the Christian civilization of the community in which he labors.

Turn we again to the contrast of such a picture. Let us suppose a school in which this vigilance in the formation of character is deemed superfluous; or a principal, the guileless simplicity of whose character is not strengthened by the wisdom of experience. A fair outward show of order and industry, and great intellectual development, may, in either case, be consistent with the latent prog

ress of a rank corruption of manners, mining all beneath. Unless the searching intelligence of the principal is capable of discerning the dispositions of his charge, and anticipating their tendencies, he is unequal to the task of molding the minds of his pupils, by the power of a loftier character and a superior will. In that case, or when the principal deems such vigilance superfluous, and is content with the intellectual labors of his office, leaving the little republic, of which he is the head, to form its own manners, and to create its own standard of principle and action, the catastrophe of a deep ulcerous corruption is not likely to be long delayed.

In either case, it is easy to trace the progress of degeneracy. A school, in which the formation of character is not the chief aim of the masters, must abandon that all-important end to the republic of scholars. When these are selected from the educated and upper ranks of society, the school will derive its code of morals from that prevalent in such classes. When the pupils belong to a very humble class, their characters are liable, under such arrangements, to be compounded of the ignorance, coarseness, and vices of the lowest orders. One pupil, the victim of low vices, or of a vulgar coarseness of thought, escaping the eye of an unsuspicious principal, or unsought for by the vigilance which is expended on the intellectual progress of the school, may corrupt the private intercourse of the students with low buffoonery, profligate jests, and sneers at the self-denying zeal of the humble student; may gradually lead astray one after another of the pupils to clandestine habits, if not to the secret practice of vice. Under such circumstances, the counsels of the principal would gradually become subjects of ridicule. A conspiracy of direct insubordination would be formed. The influence of the superior would barely maintain a fair external appearance of order and respect.

Every master issuing from such a school would become the active agent of a degeneracy of manners, by which the humbler ranks of society would be infected.

The formation of the character is, therefore, the chief aim of a training school, and the principal should be a man of Christian earnestness, of intelligence, of experience, of knowledge of the world, and of the humblest simplicity and purity

of manners.

Next to the formation of the character of the pupil is, in our estimation, the general development of his intelligence. The extent of his attainments, though within a certain range a necessary object of his training, should be subordinate to that mental cultivation, which confers the powers of self-education, and gives the greatest strength to his reflective faculties. On this account, among others, we attach importance to the methods of imparting knowledge pursued in the Normal School. While we have insured that the attainments of the students should be exact, by testing them with searching examinations, repeated at the close of every week, and reiterated lessons on all subjects in which any deficiency was discovered, nothing has been taught by rote. The memory has never been stored, without the exercise of the reason. Nothing has been learned which has not been understood. This very obvious course is too frequently lost sight of in the humbler branches of learning-principles being hidden in rules, defining only their most convenient application; or buried under a heap of facts, united by no intelligible link. To form the character, to develop the intelligence, and to store the mind with the requisite knowledge, these were the objects of the Normal School.

In the village school a new scene of labor developed itself, which has been in progress since the period of our last report, and has now nearly reached its term. If we attach pre-eminent importance to the formation of character as the object of the Normal School, a knowledge of the method of managing an elementary school, and of instructing a class in each branch of elementary knowledge, is the peculiar object of the model-school attached to any training institution. In its proper province as subordinate to the instruction and training in a Normal School, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance to a teacher, of a thorough familiarity with the theory and practice of organizing and conducting common schools. Without this, the most judicious labor in the Normal School may, so far as the future usefulness of the student as a schoolmaster is concerned, be literally wasted. It

is possible to conceive that the character may be formed on the purest model; that the intelligence may have been kept in healthful activity; and that the requisite general and technical instruction may have been acquired, yet without the aptitude to teach; without skill acquired from precept and example; without the habits matured in the discipline of schools; without the methods in which the art of teaching is reduced to technical rules, and the matter of instruction arranged in the most convenient form for elementary scholars, the previous labor wants the link which unites it to its peculiar task. On the other hand, to select from the common drudgery of a handcraft, or from the humble, if not mean pursuits of a petty trade, a young man barely (if indeed at all) instructed in the humblest elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to conceive that a few months' attendance on a model-school can make him acquainted with the theory of its organization, convert him into an adept in its methods, or even rivet upon his stubborn memory any significant part of the technical knowledge of which he has immediate need, is a mistake too shameful to be permitted to survive its universal failure.

When we speak of the necessity of a thorough acquaintance with methods of organizing and teaching in common schools, we mean to exalt the importance of previous training of the character, expansion of the intelligence, and sufficient technical instruction. Without this previous preparation, the instruction in the model-school is empirical, and the luckless wight would have had greater success in his handcraft, than he can hope to enjoy in his school.

For these reasons, among others, the attention of the students has especially of late been directed to the theory of the organization of schools, and to the acquirement of the art of teaching.

The method of conveying instruction is peculiarly important in an elementary school, because the scholars receive no learning and little judicious training at home, and are, therefore, dependent for their education on the very limited period of their attendance at school. On this account nothing superfluous should be taught, lest what is necessary be not attained. The want of a fit preparation of the mind of the scholar, and the brevity of his school life, are reasons for adopting the most certain and efficacious means of imparting knowledge, so that this short period may become as profitable as possible. The regularity of the child's attendance, the interest he takes in his learning, and his success, will be promoted by the adoption of means of instruction suited to the state of his faculties and the condition of society from which he is taken. If his progress be obstructed by the obscurity of his master's teaching, and by the absence of that tact which captivates the imagination of children, and rouses the activity of their minds, the scholar will become dull, listless, and untoward; will neglect his learning and his school, and degenerate into an obstinate dunce. The easiest transition in acquirement is in the order of simplicity from the known to the unknown, and it is indispensable to skillful teaching that the matter of instruction should be arranged in a synthetic order, so that all the elements may have to each other the relation of a progressive series from the most simple to the most complex. This arrangement of the matter of instruction requires a previous analysis, which can only be successfully accomplished by the devotion of much time. Such methods are only gradually brought to perfection by experience. The elementary schoolmaster, however highly instructed, can seldom be expected to possess either the necessary leisure or the peculiar analytical talent; and unless this work of arrangement be accomplished for him, he cannot hope, by the technical instruction of the Normal School, to acquire sufficient skill to invent a method by arranging the matter of instruction.

In order, therefore, that he may teach nothing superfluous; that he may con vey his instruction in the most skillful manner, and in the order of simplicity, it is necessary that he should become acquainted with a method of communicating each branch of knowledge.

This is the more important, because individual teaching is impossible in a common school. Every form of organization, from the monitorial to the simultaneous, includes more or less of collective teaching. The characteristics of skillful collective teaching are the simplicity and precision with which the knowledge is communicated, and the logical arrangement of the matter of instruction. Dif