By this time, too, the staff notation may be introduced, and as soon as the symbols are explained the children will have no difficulty in singing from it. Just at first, it may be well to place colored notes upon the staff, especially to show how the key-tone changes its position; but as the symbols become more familiar, the colors may be dispensed with, for they will have accomplished their purpose. Yet it will be a good plan for some time longer to mark the key-tone in every key and transition by its color red.

This color-tone method has been in operation for about two years in one of the kindergartens, where children varying from 3 to 8 years of age have been trained with very satisfactory results. At the beginning a few of the children seemed to have no musical faculty, and in them it has been like the growth of a new sense. It is very interesting to follow them and see how they first gain the power to recognize a tone by its character, and then by degrees to produce it themselves.

The method is being used this year in all the free Kindergartens of Boston, but as yet the exercises have been almost entirely confined to rhythmic development. Upwards of eighty Kindergartners in this city are now being trained for the work. Training classes have also been held in Philadelphia, and the new method is being taught there.

In the course of this work, four things have become evident:1. The musical faculty is as capable of being trained as the mathematical or any other faculty. What is called "no ear for music means simply a sluggish sense which needs quickening, and which may be educated to an unlimited extent.

2. The sense of time or rhythm manifests itself before the sense of tune, and consequently the earliest music lessons of children should be chiefly of a rhythmic nature.

3. Children very readily associate the ideas of tone and color. There can be no doubt about this. When the color method of teaching music was introduced into the Kindergarten, it was found that the children in their other occupations often substituted the name of the tone for that of the color. One lady was for a time troubled because her three-yearold child was continually running about the house and pointing out every red object as "doh." This apparent confusion of ideas, however, soon rights itself.

4. The sense of harmony is of much later growth then that of rhythm and melody. This may be seen in the musical history of the race. The rudest savage has some idea of rhythm which he tries to express by clapping his hands or beating on his drum while he performs his grotesque dance. Sense of melody marks a higher order of growth, for there is in it something of intellectual refinement. But the introduction of harmony is of comparatively recent date, even in the most highly civilized countries. This fact alone should teach us that it ought not to be prematurely forced upon the children. Let them for the present work out their ideas of rhythm and melody, and in due time their minds will grasp and understand the complicated impressions of harmony.

THE KINDERGARTEN PRINCIPLE IN INFANT SCHOOLS.

BY MISS MARY J. LYSCHINSKA.

SUGGESTIONS PRIMARILY FOR ENGLAND, BUT SOUND EVERYWHERE. Much of the educational work attempted in the English infant school is provided for, theoretically at least, in our primary schools-the lowest grade of our city public schools; but the work is not begun so early or followed out so systematically as in English infant schools modeled after those of the Home and Colonial Infant School Society. The difficulties in the way of introducing the fundamental principle of natural development into the infant schools of England, arises from the impatience of parents, as well as the requisitions of the Code, for results which can be seen in actual attainments of book knowledge and measured by official examinations. Neither the infant school, or Kindergarten, is regarded in reference to its own nature and functions, but in reference to the children making more rapid progress in certain studies which are attended to further on. The proper treatment of children between the ages of 3 and 7 years requires more individual attention than can be given to large masses, or by teachers not specially trained in Kindergarten occupations, and with certain refinement of feeling. There is a strong tendency, as well as great temptation to a class of parents, to develope early the productive activities of their children, and to show off their proficiency in this and other directions. The innate modesty of children should not be prematurely brushed away. On all these points the suggestions of Miss Lyschinska, who has rare opportunities of studying these phases of child culture, as Superintendent of Method in Infant Schools under the School Board of London, and in the Kindergarten of Madame Schrader of Berlin, are of great value.-Editor.

It has been justly a boast with the Germans that they, more than any other European nation, recognized Pestalozzi's efforts in the direction of a psychological basis for the beginning of instruction, and in considering education as a branch of statesmanship. The political and social circumstances of the time were peculiarly favorable to the reception of a new, creative principle in education. Geographically and politically Germany was a name; she had sunk to the depths of national degradation. But as with individuals, so with nations-the moments of a crushing misfortune are often those most favorable to the birth of new spiritual truths. In his memorable "Addresses," Fichte's voice was heard like a trumpet-call throughout the land; he pointed to Pestalozzi as a saviour of the nations. From that hour the whole German scholastic world has become literally saturated with the principles of Pestalozzianism. So unreserved, so wholesale has been the adoption of the new educational life, that, from its extent alone, it must be reckoned with as a national feature by all those who would study the intellectual life of Germany. Since then another wave of educational thought has been slowly passing over Germany, proceeding from the original impetus given by Pestalozzi, yet with features sufficiently distinct to entitle it to a separate name. It has now reached our shores, and has been crystallized in the form of the "Kindergarten." The principle must, however, admit of a variety of adaptations; and it must, sooner or later, exert a greater influence than hitherto upon the co-existing institution of the infant school.

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Meanwhile there seems to be one loophole of escape out of the difficulty, and that is the introduction of extraneous help-help not supplied in the usual way from elementary training colleges. Of course the weakness of such an experiment as that of introducing new auxiliaries into the routine of trained labor is evident, and consists in (1) the probable irregularity of such service, (2) the unskilled character of such help. If these arguments against voluntary aid are true generally, they hold good especially in the domain of school-keeping, where a little irregularity is sufficient to throw the whole educational machinery out of order. I am not, therefore, about to advocate the throwing open the floodgates for undisciplined energy to expend itself to the detriment of the children of the poor.

Suppose an infant school to be excepted from the ordinary conditions of examination, though still subject to inspection and receiving aid on satisfactory proof of efficiency, according to Kindergarten principles. It is surely not inconceivable that permission for such an experiment might be obtained, nor need the sacred rules of the Code be infringed to any perilous extent. The Head would be a person generally acquainted with the principles and practice of education (not merely those of instruction), and she should be especially versed in the principles underlying Kindergarten practices. She might be assisted by a staff of auxiliary, but not unpaid, workers. These would rank as and receive the pay of pupil teachers in their second year, and they should, if possible, be numerous enough to admit of an average of not more than 25 children to each class. Thus a small school of 100 children in average attendance would be worked by the head and four pupil-teachers (viz. one of the ordinary kind, so as to comply with the requirements of the code, and three auxiliaries), who should be completely under the control of the Head, being nominated for appointment or subject to removal by her; and she, in turn, should be directly and solely responsible to a sub-committee of the school board or other highest school authority. The pay of such extra pupil-teachers need not be high. There are many young people to whom the opportunity of instruction and practice in genuine Kindergarten work would be a consideration more valuable than money.

Mr. Meyers, an Inspector of one of the London Districts, observes in his Report for 1876:

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When I had charge of the Hackney district, I repeatedly visited a School Board School where almost all of the girls were the children of professional thieves. The mistress was a lady who resigned a good position as private governess out of desire for this missionary work. The result of her work, as seen in the contrast in expression, speech, and aspect, between the new arrivals and those who had enjoyed a year's schooling, was almost startling. I certainly felt that this lady had made a career which was entirely satisfactory, where every power that she possessed was finding its exercise in a direction, undoubtedly and without drawback, beneficent. In a career where the satisfaction derived from the work itself may be so sound and so pervading, the amusements of leisure become less important. The great needs of Elementary Schools is an improvement of their teachers; a large accession of teachers who have the gentleness of life-long culture and the hereditary instinct of honour.

[The experience of St. Louis, under the wise and beneficent lead of Miss Blow, and Dr. Harris, is of great value in this connection.]

Our national system is not only covering all England with elementary schools, but it is also multiplying centres for the discussion and elucidation of questions relating to education. For the functions of school boards will be but half performed in the future if they limit their action to voting supplies and to setting a blind machinery in motion. As the mechanism may be expected to work with increasing smoothness, and with decreasing need for attention to the first elements of management, the higher work of school boards will consist in bringing a certain amount of educated thought to bear directly upon the problems of educational science.

Would it not be possible, even now, to allow more scope for the application of Pestalozzi-Froebelian principles within the operations of the Elementary Education Acts? Why should not school boards here and there set apart a few infant schools to begin with, for a certain term of years, for the especial purpose of applying the principles of the Kindergarten still more thoroughly to our national system? Why should not such experiments receive the sanction of Government, and be judged under special instructions to Inspectors to consider them in the light of the educational principles they involve rather than by the trick of "pass. es," already beginning to be found fallacious in guaging the ultimate worth of educational institutions?

In 1877 Mr. Scoltock, H. M. Inspector for the Birmingham district, spoke of the educational work in clementary schools generally in the fol lowing strain:

"It will be seen that the inspector and his assistants agree in thinking that the teaching has become mechanical rather than intelligent; that the school is valued rather by the number of passes' and largeness of the grant; that attempts are being made to reduce teaching to a dry matter of statistics, and to drive children in a hackneyed road, instead of developing their intelligence and gently guiding their faculties. Moreover, to teachers themselves this comparison of averages is most unfair. An idle and slippery master in a well-to do neighborhood, if aided by clever assistants, may show glorious results without doing a hour's real work; whereas, in a neighborhood thronged by the careless and the vicious, another may work the very life out, and his results will show but a wretched percentage."

Under the London Board a staff is supplied at the rate of an average of 30 children to a pupil-teacher, and 60 to an assistant; but practically a pupil-teacher is expected to teach 40, and an assistant 70 infants. To people interested in the education question it must appear especially undesirable that children under six years should be educated in such masses; and although a State system can at the best offer but a poor substitute for the divinely-appointed means for the young child's education, the family, surely it would be well for the controllers of our national educational system to consider whether there is not some limit to legitimate divergence from the natural conditions of child-life. A teacher with from 60 to 70 children must, in self-defence, allow the least possible scope for individuality to assert itself; the personal links between children and teacher are weakened; the whole character of her intercourse with her children changes; uniformity, drill, a superficial order (the elements of which are almost entirely physical) must be maintained.

EDUCATION-THE NEED OF THE SOUTH.

BY DEXTER A. HAWKINS, A. M.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The following paper by Dexter A. Hawkins, A.M., of the New York bar, was read before the American Social Science Association at its annual meeting at Saratoga in September, 1877, and printed in the proceedings of that year. We transfer it to our pages, because the evils of unlettered suffrage still exist to an appalling degree in the States known as the South, and the remedies of the free common school established by each State, with the aid of the General Government, within the reach of every child, and the denial of the ballot henceforward to all who do not profit by its privileges, have not yet been applied.

THE NEED OF THE SOUTH.

One of the most beneficent problems that can engage our attention is the restoration of the Southern States to permanent peace and prosperity, as equal members of a great and free Democratic Republic, and the qualifying them for our system of government, and harmonizing them with it.

In order to effect this, without waste of time and of money, it is necessary, first, to diagnose their present condition; to look a little into its cause, so as to determine how far this condition is the result of social disease, and how far of injury; and to apply, in proper proportions, the wisdom of the physician to the disease, and the skill of the surgeon to the injury.

But, above all, we must bear in mind that it is the vis medicatrix naturæ, the healing power of time, supplemented simply by human action, that will work enduring restoration.

The social state, whether formed of equals or of castes, and whether thriving or growing poor, is of slow growth. Generations are required to effect a radical change in it for good, or for evil. Let us take for examination and illustration the nine cotton States: North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. They contain, according to the census of 1870, a population over ten years.