its impressions, as a revelation from without. It was once remarked, I think by Lord Brougham, that he believed he learned more in the three first years of his existence, than in all the rest of his life put together. And when we consider the total unconscious ignorance, with which we come into the world, and, then, when we take a child of three or four years old and see what it has attained-how it has learned all its first lessons in time and space; to how perfect a use of the senses it has arrived; how accurately it can judge the relations of form, of size, of distance; how it can distinguish not only the phenomena of the outward world by name and in due order,-but how it has advanced in the knowledge of man,-how readily it judges of character;-how rapidly it reads the human countenance;-how intuitively it sides with the good and the gentle;-how direct its moral decisions,-how acute and intense its perceptions of all that is joyous, and beautiful, we feel that there is really enough to justify the affirmation to which I above referred.

But now the question comes-What is the faculty by which the child-without effort-without instructor,-without the aid of schools or lessons,-without anything but nature and life around it, learns all this wisdom? What is the form of mental activity which thus goes forth, and gathers, in so short a time, so rich and bounteous a harvest? The names, I reply, we give to this power of mind, which goes forth directly to its object without any intervention of language, are various. Sometimes we term it perception, particularly when we are speaking of the direct apprehension of natural objects as they exist in time and space. Sometimes again we term it intuition, more especially so when we wish to express the soul's direct appreciation of beauty-or harmony-or moral truth-or religious aspiration. But the form of mental activity in each case is the same;-it is nature coming in direct contact with the soul, and

putting its divine impress upon it. It is the universe, and all the truth it tacitly embodies, rushing in to fill up the vacuum which that new born spirit presents-and lavishing its treasures upon it before it is dragged away into the stream of human history and tradition.

With regard now to the process of education, which is adapted to these early years of intuitive life-there are two main points, which as it seems to me should be kept in view, the one is perceptive teaching (as being most directly in harmony with the predominent faculty); the other is the training of the will to the first exercise of self-control, and obedience to command. By perceptive teaching I do not mean merely object lessons, such as those which are usually given in the infant school,-but I mean teaching by the entire arrangements of domestic life. The child should learn the qualities of matter, not only in his school, but in his play;-he should have the germs of beauty implanted in his mind by objects surrounding him which are themselves beautiful; and by attempts imitate them; the choicest music should early breathe its purest and tenderest inspiration into his bosom; a home of purity and affection should be his first lessons in love and goodness; a devout petition in the calmness of evening, or the solemnity of night his first guide towards reverence before the infinite and eternal. Such perceptive teaching is never erased. Years may roll over-storms of passion and floodgates of evil may deluge the soul in its after history; but with a substratum of impressions like these left in the substance of the very organism, and incorporated into the very being of the man, there is always a distant streak of light left in the moral hemisphere; and the poor wandering mind returns to this, as the dove did to the ark, and feels that there alone (in the cherishing of there impressions) it can see held out to it the olive branch of an inward peace, long lost, and perhaps long dispaired of.

But the will has to be especially regulated during this critical era of life as well as the understanding and the feelings. The particular reason of this will be obvious from a very few considerations. The rise and development of self-consciousness in the child is always accompanied by a sense of inward power in relation to the world without. This sense of power shews itself in a natural propensity to break and destroy every object, every play-thing that comes within its reach. Nothing in fact can be more absurd than to give to a child an expensive toy, and expect him to take especial care of it. The meaning of play at this early period is the instructive exercise of a new-found power over nature,—and its real value lies in the nurturing of our self-consciousness, and in the realisation of our nascent ability to conquer the material world around us, and bend it to our service; and the more destructive the child is the more it is answering that end. The very same tendency leads to the desire of tyrannising over others. The young child is naturally a tyrant; he will reduce if he can every one else around him to be the slave of his desires a result alas! too often accomplished. All this sufficiently shews us that the age we are now considering is a very critical one in relation to the government of the will. The problem is to reduce. this lawlessness, with which self rises up to assert its power, into a willing obedience to order and discipline-an obedience which does not arise from the crushing effect of sternness and severity, but from the feeling steadily inspired of the absolute power of a command. For myself I have no faith in wheedling a child into obedience;-and no faith in making that obedience too consistent with its own pleasure or gratification. The laws of nature are not severe, but they are strong and unyielding; hence we never mourn against them. And so should be the laws of obedience. Do what you will you cannot make a child understand the ground of this-and therefore the

attempt to reason upon it at all is merely yielding the point. We know, that obedience to a categorical command, or imperative, is the first great lesson in our whole moral life; and that unmurmuring deference to the will of a parent or teacher is the very best,-nay the only natural preparation for our subsequent unwavering deference to the moral law of God.

We have now taken a glance at two-i. e., the two first stages in our mental development;-the sensational and the perceptive, or intuitive. In both of these you will alike see that the mind arrives at no real independence-i. e., at no power of thinking anything for itself, without the immediate stimulus of some outward object. In the sensational stage it is simply occupied with impressions created directly through the nervous system :-in the intuitive stage again the mind is simply reacting upon those impressions, and receiving the stamp which nature and human life are calculated to put upon it. Now the next great step in the unfolding of our intellectual life, is the power of reproducing those impressions;

of representing them to ourselves internally, and occupying our minds, not simply with the things themselves, but with these inward representations of them. I have already pointed out the fact that every impression made on the mind through the nervous system leaves an indelible trace behind it. Of course these impressions are not for a time consciously reproduced: they are purely instinctive at first. But there arrives a period in the course of our mental development, in which we not only reproduce our varied mental phenomena, but become conscious of that reproduction, and are able fully to connect the actual perception of a thing with the after representation of it within us. When the power of mental reproduction arrives at this stage, we term it memory. Again if we employ images within our mind merely as images, without any further reference to their external source, if we expand and combine them,-or put

them into new, and perhaps fantastic forms-then we term it imagination;—and lastly if we then attempt to trace the principles of order or arrangement, by which the constant flow of images through the consciousness is regulated, we term these the laws of association.

All this group of phenomena, then, we include under one head, and call it the representative of faculty. The triumph of the representative faculty is seen at length in the creation of language;-for here not only are our perceptions internally represented and reproduced; but these very inward representations are projected out of ourselves, and embodied in external signs;-so that by means of language the mind can place its own work before it, as the object of its own calm and steady contemplation.

Now observation shews that the period of boyhood, -that important era of our existence, which ranges usually from about the sixth or seventh, to the twelfth or thirteenth year of our life, (differing of coure in different individuals) that this period of boyhood, I say, is chiefly remarkable for the development and for the intense activity of the representative power. The memory at this period of life is remarkably active, far more so than is usually the case in more advanced years -the power of seizing vivid ideas of things, of recalling them again and again ;of combining them; of associating them; of connecting them with the appropriate words, and signs, is in the highest state of intensity. In after life the mind gets into more fixed trains of thought; its habits being formed, the faculties move in certain distinct lines of action: but in boyhood such is not the case. Here the mind is versatile-intensely receptive, curious for new ideas-and rapid in its association of these ideas with the words that express them. This is seen in the wonderful facility with which languages are acquired through the ear at this period of life. A child of nine or ten years of age