look around, and he will doubtless find, what we have been astonished to observe, that many men having the strongest minds as well as memories, and the best business talents, do not know how to read or write. Let him ask which is preferable, book-learning, or common sense ? a college learned sapling, or a strong-minded, common sense citizen who cannot read ? and train his children accordingly. Not that reading is not good, but that common sense is far better. Not that I would have reading, writing, and spelling neglected, but I would make them secondary, both as to time, and as to intrinsic importance.

The course pointed out by Phrenology, then, is simply this. Even before your child is three months old, place a variety of objects before it; take it into rooms and places which it has not yet seen, and hold it often to the window to look abroad upon nature, and see things that may be passing, &c. At six months, take hold of the things shown it, and call them by name, as plate, bowl, knife, fork, spoon, table, bed, &c. At one and two years old, take it out of doors much, (which will strengthen its body as well as afford increased facilities for seeing things,) show it flowers, trees, leaves, fruit, animals, &c., in their ever-varying genera and species; and when it asks you “Pa, what is this?” “Ma, what is that?" instead of chiding it with an “Oh, dear, you pother me to death with your everlasting questions, do hush up," take pains to explain all, and even to excite curiosity to know more. Take your children daily into your fields, or gardens, or shops, and while you are procuring them the means of physical support and comfort, store their minds with useful knowledge. Even if they hinder you, rejoice; remembering that you are developing their immortal minds a matter of infinitely greater importance than adorning their persons, or leaving them rich.

As they become three and four years old, take them to the Museum : show them all the fish, birds, animals, &c. Tell them all that is known about the habits, actions, and condition of each, (not all in a day, or in a year,) and provide them with books on natural history, with explanatory cuts, (what, for children to read before they have learned their letters? no, but) so that, as they clamber upon your lap, and fold their filial arms around your willing neck, you may show them

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these pictures, and read what is said of the habits, dispositions, modes of life, &c. of the animals represented. Show them the minerals, their diversity, colors, kinds, &c. ; and then take them into the laboratory of nature, and show them the operations of the chemical and philosophical world.

Take them again into your garden; show them a pretty flower, (reader, did you ever see a child that was not extraordinarily fond of flowers?) show them its parts and the uses of each; the calyx and its texture and location as adapted to the protection of the flower; the petals and their office; the stamens, and their office; the pistil, and all its other parts, with the uses and functions of each, and your child will be delighted beyond measure. The next day, show it another and different flower; point out their resemblances and differences, and you not only gratify, or rather excite and develope your child's intellectual curiosity, but also teach it to analyze, compare, classify, &c.-the first step in reasoning.

"But I do not know enough," says one parent. Then go and learn. Let young ladies spend less time over their toilet, music, love-tales, parties, "setting their caps," &c., so that they can learn the more, and be the better qualified to cultivate the intellects of their children. Parents are solemnly bound, in duty to their children and their God, not to become parents till they are qualified to educate and govern their children.

"But I have not the time," says another. Then you should not have time to marry. Take time first to do what is most important. But more hereafter on the duties of parents to educate their own children, and also on the qualifications requisite for this most responsible office. I will first show how to educate children, and then, how to find time to do it. And yet, strange inconsistency, many young people rush headlong into the marriage state, totally unqualified to train up their children, either intellectually or morally. And it is still more strange, that, with all the interest felt in this subject, and all the efforts made to improve it, we have only made matters worse; because, the modern systems of education are not founded in the nature of man; but, in nearly every feature, are in direct violation of that nature, especially of the natures of children.

Having thus laid the foundation of education in observation, not books, I proceed to build its first story, which consists in the cultivation of

EVENTUALITY :*

Desire to witness or make EXPERIMENTS; to find out what is; to know what Has been, and to ascertain what WILL be; love of KNOWLEDGE; thirst for INFORMATION; desire to hear and relate ANECDOTES; recollection of action, phenomena, occurrences, circumstances, historical facts, the news of the day, events, &c.

ADAPTATION.-Nature is one great theatre of action, motion, and change. These changes or operations, are almost infinite in number and variety. Rivers are ever running, the tides ebbing and flowing; the seasons going and returning; vegetation springing up, arriving at maturity, or returning to decay; and all nature, whether animate or inanimate, is undergoing one continual round of changes. Man, so far from being exempt from this law, is a perfect illustration of it. Instead of being placed in the midst of one monotonous now, one unchanging sameness, his heart is ever beating, blood always flowing, lungs ever in motion, and his mind (at least in its waking state) experiencing a number and variety of incidents or events never to be told; for, the very recital of them, would only double their number. Innumerable historical events have been continually transpiring from the first dawn of human existence until now, widening and varying with the addition of every successive being to our race. To be placed in a one-condition state, in which no changes or events occur, would preclude all happiness; for, the very experiencing of pleasure or pain, or even of any mental exercise, is itself an event. Even the sciences themselves are only an enumeration of the operations, or the doings of nature. Or, in case these changes existed, if man had no primary faculty which could take cognizance of them, or remember them, nature would be a sealed book; suffering and enjoyment impossible; experience, our main guide to certain knowledge, and the best of teachers, unknown; and all the memory of the past and even of our own existence, obliterated.

* In this work, little attention will be paid to the order in which the intellectual organs are usually described, but they will be taken up in that connexion which will best illustrate and enforce the author's ideas and conclusions.

Eventuality, therefore, adapts man to his existence in a world of changes and events; lays up rich treasures of knowledge; recalls what we have seen, heard, read, or experienced; is the main store-house of experimental knowledge; and aids reason in teaching us what will be from what has been. The function of no intellectual faculty is more important, and the loss of none, more injurious. Its development follows closely upon that of Individuality; being one of the earliest and strongest intellectual faculties manifested in children. Without this to retain the knowledge they are hourly acquiring, they could not advance a single step in acquiring that experimental knowledge of things, the application of which is indispensable in every thing we say or do. The constitution of the human mind requires that Individuality, or a craving curiosity to see every thing, should be developed and exercised before reason, or any other intellectual faculty can be brought into action; and, secondly, that Eventuality or the memory of things seen and knowledge acquired, should follow next; and, that these two mental operations should constitute the main body of all our knowledge, as well as the only correct basis of all reasoning. Inferences not drawn from facts, or not founded in them, are valueless. Reason without facts, is like an eye in total darkness, or rather, reasoning cannot exist without being based on facts; or, more properly, reasoning is only a general fact, a law which governs a given class of nature's operations. This arguing and drawing inferences independently of facts is not reasoning, it is only guessing, or surmising, or giving a therefore without a wherefore, which is no guide to truth, and worse than valueless; for, like an "ignis fatuus," it only misleads.

These remarks, though they present the function of Eventuality in its true light, by no means do justice to its importance, which it is impossible for words to express. Still, they show the necessity of its cultivation in children, and that every other faculty, except observation, which is its twin-sister, must give way to its early improvement. I shall next consider

THE MEANS OF STRENGTHENING MEMORY OF EVENTS.

This can be effected only by calling it into vigorous and habitual EXERCISE; and this must be done, particularly in children, by keeping before the mind interesting events to be

remembered. All this can not be done in school; for, little occurs there to be remembered except their plays. A short story will best illustrate and enforce this point.

A teacher taking a little girl upon his knee, asked her if she went to school, "Yes, sir," said she. "And what do you do in school?" inquired he; "I set on a bench and say A,” was her answer. Children from three years old and upwards, are sent to school to set on a bench and say A; or, to spell A B, ab; or, B A, ba, K E R, ker, ba-ker, &c., which they do by rote, just as a parrot says "pretty polly," and know just as much about it, and it does them "nearly" as much good; whereas, confining them in-doors, preventing their taking exercise, even to their nestling or moving on their seats, (for which they are often punished,) and also compelling them to breathe a vitiated atmosphere, does them a thousand fold more harm than saying A does them good. Strange that parents and teachers have so long violated this leading principle of intellectual culture, and no wonder that so many are consequently cursed with treacherous memories. Swing up the arm or foot of a child six or more hours daily, for years, and punish it for moving it, and see if it does not become as feeble as the memories of most persons now are; and, for precisely the same reason--INACTION.

In addition to this, children are required to remember what does not at all interest them. Of what interest to them is the calling of a certain shape by A; of another, by B., &c. ; or that a b spell ab? Just the same that "pretty polly" is to the parrot, and for the same reason. But only tell them a story, or just show and explain passing things to them, and they are instantly electrified with interest. Their attention is riveted, and their memory of the story, or of the thing seen, is powerfully excited, and the organ of Eventuality exercised, and thereby enlarged.

Do you ask, then, what course of early education Phrenology points out? I answer: Show them things, and what things do. Tell them stories, and exhibit to them the operations of nature FIRST; teach them to read and spell afterward.

Have you, mothers and nurses, never seen children open their eyes with the dawn of day, and plead "mother, tell me a story," "please, mother, do tell me a story?" And have you never heard the impatient answer, "O hush; I've told