the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord Egremont, in a transport of delight; and for twice the sum the artist put upon it, that is, six hundred guineas. I do not know whether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, is a great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science deliberately, according to the artist's confession. But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its combinations were the basis of both the science and the art.

This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying that the First Gift has, for its most important office, to develop the organ of sight, which grows by seeing. Colors arouse intentional seeing by the delightful impression they make. I believe that color-blindness (which our army examinations have proved to be as common as want of ear for music) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ of sight in a systematic way; just as ear for music may be developed in those who are not born with it. Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by beginning gently with little children, giving graduated exercises so agreeable to them as to arouse their will to try to hear, in order to reproduce.

That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of the fact that the organs of perception actually grow by exercise with intention, I will relate to you a fact that came under my own observation.

A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz, who gave him, among his first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very powerful microscope, asking him to find out and tell all their differences. At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope all the time that he dared to use his eyes for a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said that "it was the best month's work he ever did, to form the scientific eye which could detect differences ever after, at a glance," and proved to him an invaluable talent and gave him exceptional authority with scientists.

KINDERGARTEN IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.

BY WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,*

Superintendent of Public Instruction in St. Louis.

PRELIMINARY AND ASSOCIATED QUESTIONS.

THE question of the kindergarten cannot be settled without considering many subordinate questions.

In one sense the whole of life is an education, for man is a being that constantly develops - for good or evil. In every epoch of his life an education goes on. There are well-defined epochs of growth or of education: that of infancy, in which education is chiefly that of use and wont, the formation of habits as regards the care of the person, and the conduct within family life; that of youth, wherein the child learns in the school how to handle those instrumentalities which enable him to participate in the intellectual or theoretical acquisitions of the human race, and wherein, at the same time, he learns those habits of industry, regularity, and punctuality, and self-control which enable him to combine with his fellow-men in civil society and in the state; then there is that education which follows the period of school education-the education which one gets by the apprenticeship to a vocation or calling in life. Other spheres of education are the state, or body-politic, and its relation to the individual, wherein the latter acts as a citizen, making laws through his elected representatives, and assisting in their execution; the church, wherein he learns to see all things under the form of eternity, and to derive thence the ultimate standards of his theory and practice in life.

The question of the kindergarten also involves, besides this one of province―i. e., the question whether there is a place for it--the consideration of its disciplines, or what it accomplishes in the way of theoretical insight or of practical will-power; these two, and the development of the emotional nature of the human being. Exactly what does the kindergarten attempt to do in these directions? And then, after the what it does is ascertained, arises the question whether it is desirable to attempt such instruction in the school; whether it does not take the place of more desirable training, which the school has all along been furnishing; or whether it does not, on the other hand, trench on the province of the education within the family-a period of nurture wherein the pupil gets most of his internal, or subjective, emotional life developed? If the kindergarten takes the child too soon from the family, and abridges the period of nurture, it must perforce injure his character on the whole; for the period of nurture is like the root-life of the plant, essential for the development of the above-ground life of the plant, essential for the public life of the man, the life wherein he combines with his fellow-men.

*Prepared for Meeting of American Froebel Union, December, 1879.

Then, again, there is involved the question of education for vocation in life-the preparation for the arts and trades that are to follow school-lifeas the third epoch in life-education. Should the education into the technicalities of vocations be carried down into the school-life of the pupil; still more, should it be carried down into the earliest period of transition from the nurture-period to the school-period?

Besides these essential questions, there are many others of a subsidiary nature, those relating to expense, to the training of teachers and their supply, to the ability of public-school boards to manage such institutions, to the proper buildings for their use, the proper length of sessions, the degree of strictness of discipline to be preserved, etc., etc. The former essential questions relate to the desirability of kindergarten education; the latter relate to the practicability of securing it.

IDEAL OF THE KINDERGARTEN.

The most enthusiastic advocates of the kindergarten offer, as grounds for its establishment, such claims for its efficiency as might reasonably be claimed only for the totality of human education, in its five-fold aspectof nurture, school, vocation, state, and church. If what they claim for it were met with as actual results, we certainly should realize the fairest ideals of a perfected type of humanity at once. Such claims, however, can be made only of a life-long education in its five-fold aspect, and not of any possible education which lasts only from one to four years in the life of the individual. Notwithstanding this exaggeration, it may prove to be the case that the kindergarten is justified in claiming a province heretofore unoccupied by the school or by family nurture, and a province which is of the utmost importance to the right development of those phases of life which follow it. It is, indeed, no reproach to the friends of the "new education" (as they call it) to accuse them of exaggeration. The only fault which we may charge them with is a tendency to ignore, or under-rate, the educational possibilities of the other provinces of human life, and especially those of the school as it has hitherto existed.

To illustrate the breadth of view which the advocates of the kindergarten entertain in regard to the theory and practical value of the kindergarten, I quote here a statement of its rationale, furnished me by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, justly considered the leading advocate for the new education in this country:

"The rationale of Froebel's method of education is only to be given by a statement of the eternal laws which organize human nature on the one side and the material universe on the other.

"Human nature and the material universe are related contrasts, which it is the personal life of every human being to unify. Material nature is the unconscious manifestation of God, and includes the human body, with which man finds himself in relation so vital that he takes part in perfecting it by means of the organs; and this part of nature is the only part of nature which can be said to be dominated vitally by man, who, in the instance of Jesus Christ, so purified it by never violating any law of human nature-which (human nature) is God's intentional revelation of Himself to each-that He seems to have had complete dominion, and could make

Himself visible or invisible at will; transfiguring His natural body by His spiritual body, as on the Mount of Transfiguration; or consuming it utterly, as on the Mount of Ascension. Whether man, in this atmosphere, will ever do this, and thus abolish natural death, or not, there is no doubt there will be infinite approximation to this glorification of humanity in proportion as education does justice to the children, as Froebel's education aims to do it; for it is his principle to lead children to educate themselves from the beginning-like Socrates's demon-forbidding the wrong and leaving the self-activity free to goodness and truth, which it is destined to pursue for ever and ever."

A writer in the Canadian School Journal gives utterance to the following estimate of the value of kindergartens:

"Graduated from a true kindergarten, a child rejoices in an individual self-poise and power which makes his own skill and judgment important factors of his future progress. He is not like every other child who has been in his class; he is himself. His own genius, whatever it may be, has had room for growth and encouragement to express itself. He therefore sees some object in his study, some purpose in his effort. Everything in his course has been illuminated by the same informing thought; and, therefore, with the attraction that must spring up in the young mind from the use of material objects in his work, instead of a weariness, his way has been marked at every step by a buoyant happiness and an eager interest. Any system that produces such results is educationally a good system. But when you add that all this has been done so naturally and so judiciously that the child has derived as much physical as mental advantage, and an equally wholesome moral development, who can deny that it is superior to any other yet devised or used, and that, as such, it is the inalienable birthright of every child to be given the advantages of its training? . . . Before the time of Froebel, the science of pedagogics was founded upon abstruse thought, although sometimes introducing as in the various object-systems-the concrete form as a means of education; but Froebel, by a Divine inspiration, laid aside his books, wherein theory mystified theory, and studied the child. He said, God will indicate to us in the native instincts of His creature the best method for its development and governance. He watched the child at its play, and at its work. He saw that it was open to impressions from every direction; that its energies were manifested by unceasing curiosity and unceasing restlessness; that, if left to itself, the impossibility of reaching any satisfactory conclusions in its researches, little by little stifled its interest; the eager desire to explore deeply the world of ideas and objects before him passed into a superficial observation, heeding little and sure of nothing. He saw that the law which made it flit from object to object in this unceasing motion was a law of development implanted by God, and, therefore, good; but that, unless it were directed and given aim and purpose, it became an element of mischief as well. Then what could be done? How was the possible angel to be developed, and the possible devil to be defeated? Froebel said: 'If we take God's own way, we must be right; so let us direct into a systematic, but natural course of employment all these tender fancies, these fearless little hands and feet,

and these precious little cager souls; and then we shall work with the Divine love and intelligence, and it with us, and our children shall find the good and avoid the evil.' Then year was added to year of thought and study and practice, until he gave his system to the world in its present completed form."

The disciples of Froebel everywhere see the world in this way. With them the theory of the kindergarten is the theory of the world of man and nature. Froebel himself was as much a religious (or moral) enthusiast as a pedagogical reformer. The moral regeneration of the race is the inspiring ideal which his followers aim to realize.

I do not disparage this lofty ideal; it is the ideal which every teacher should cherish. No other one is a worthy one for the teacher of youth! But I think that any gifted teacher in our district schools, our high schools, or our colleges, may, as reasonably as the teacher of the kindergarten, have this lofty expectation of the moral regeneration of the race to follow from his teachings. If the child is more susceptible at the early age when he enters the kindergarten, and it is far easier then to mould his personal habits, his physical strength and skill, and his demeanor towards his equals and his superiors, yet, on the other hand, the high-school teacher or the college professor comes into relation with him when he has begun to demand for himself an explanation of the problem of life, and it is possible, for the first time, at this age to lead him to insight—the immediate philosophical view of the universality and necessity of principles. Insight is the faculty of highest principles, and, of course, more important than all other theoretical disciplines. It is therefore probable that the opportunity of the teacher who instructs pupils at the age of sixteen years and upwards is, on an average, more precious for the welfare of the individual than that of the teacher whose pupils are under six years. This advantage, however, the teacher of the youngest pupils has: that she may give them an influence that will cause them to continue their education in after-life. The primary school, with its four years' course, usually enrolls five pupils where the grammar-school, with a course of four years, enrolls only one pupil. The importance of the primary school is seen in the fact that it affects a much larger proportion of the inhabitants of a community, while the importance of the high school rests on the fact that its education develops insight and directive power, so that its graduates do most of the thinking and planning that is done for the community.

But there are special disciplines which the child of five years may receive profitably, that the youth of sixteen would not find sufficiently productive.

GENERAL AND SPECIAL DISCIPLINE.

There has been for some time a popular clamor in favor of the introduction of the arts and trades into public schools. It has been supposed by self-styled "practical" writers upon education that the school should fit the youth for the practice of some vocation or calling. They would have the child learn a trade as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the most zealous of them demand that it shall be a trade, and not much else. But the good sense of the educational world, as a whole, has not been moved to depart from the even tenor of its way, and has de