Students complain that they cannot find books on science and the arts from which they can derive a knowledge of the points required to be pictured out in the daily training lessons, without an extent of reading which they cannot accomplish, and a variety of voluminous works which are beyond their reach. They also equally complain that Bible commentaries, while in general they give a good doctrinal or practical lesson, yet they do not present the natural picture or the As on which the lesson rests, and which is so uniformly presented in the Scriptures themselves.

Our answer is this, bring up the children to your own level, whatever that may be, which the system of communication enables you to do, and that will be greatly higher than any class of children that may be placed under your charge; and you and they, by this exercise, will mutually acquire a power of analysing terms, and picturing out ideas that will render folio volumes less and less necessary. Your own mental powers will get so sharpened up as to analyse more and more, during the ordinary process of reading such books as are within your reach, which, coupled with the increased power of observation that practice bestows, will enable you to rise to a height of knowledge certainly as high as can be demanded in any initiatory, juvenile, or senior elementary school. In institutions for the deaf and dumb, the idea uniformly must accompany the term, otherwise the pupils cannot advance one step. It would be well were every master, with ordinary pupils, not deprived of such organs of acquiring information, to adopt this natural process. Hence the surprising substantiality in the knowledge acquired by the interesting unfortunates of a deaf and dumb institution.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MEMORANDA-FOR STUDENTS AND SCHOOL-TRAINERS.

THE following hints were primarily addressed to the students in the Normal Seminary, at a time when the state of the author's health prevented him from enforcing the same points during the weekly public and private criticisms. They are added here in consequence of the demand they met with in their less permanent form.

INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.

1. Simplicity is the most distinguishing feature of the training system, and the last and highest attainment of a trainer.

2. Train not the intellect of the child merely, but the child-the whole man-the moral being. Remember that the child is only trained in the way he should go' when his physical, intellectual, and moral (of course religious) powers are simultaneously exercised in accordance with the precepts and principles of the divine record.

3. Let everything pass through the understanding, in the first instance, before you lodge it in the verbal memory. In other words, never commit words to memory until the meaning be previously analysed, pictured out, and understood.

4. Do not omit to exercise the verbal memory of your pupils, only let it be subsequent to the exercise of the understanding. For example, if a hymn is to be committed to memory, reverse the usual method; let it be thoroughly analysed before the children are required to repeat it.

5. Picturing out is a fundamental principle of the training system. Picture out the outlines first, which is the natural mode, and let the same process be observed in drawing out the minuter points progressively. Remember what we have often said, the portrait painter does not finish an eye or the mouth, and afterwards the outlines of the face. He gives the outlines of the whole face in the first instance, and then the outlines of every feature in succession, and finishes none of the features entirely until he has

painted the outlines of all; such is the natural, and, therefore, the efficient process.

6. If you have drawn the picture properly out in words, which cannot be done without familiar illustrations, within, and not beyond the experience of your pupils, the children must be prepared to give the lesson, just as they would recognise the likeness of a human face. If they see the picture properly drawn, they must be able to tell what it represents. When we say, 'picture out,' always remember that the children draw the picture with you, and make part of every sentence their own, and this is done not by mere question and answer, but by question and ellipsis mixed.

7. You will remember, that however highly useful and necessary objects and pictures of objects are, to interest and instruct the young mind, yet the systematic principle of picturing out in words is more varied and efficient -a picture or object represents one condition. In conversation, or at the gallery lessons, therefore, picturing out fills up those innumerable interstices of a quality or subject which no number or variety of real objects or pictures can possibly do. We proceed on the fundamental principle, that every word in the English language either represents an object, a combination of objects, or may be pictured out in words representing objects.

8. When we speak of picturing out by familiar illustrations, every term before it is used, and every part of a subject you take up, we refer to every lesson in grammar, etymology, geography, natural history, natural science, the arts of life, and Scripture in its history, emblems, imagery, doctrines, promises, and precepts.

9. Allow all or any of the children in the gallery to answer simultaneously. Notice one or two of the answers or fillings up of the ellipses, whether these be right or wrong. Convince the children who give the erroneous answer that they are wrong, and exercise their minds by analogy, illustrations, etc., up to a point that shows their error. If you do not notice the wrong answers as well as the right ones, they will continue to be repeated. If you notice no answer till you get the right one, you will only create, or at least perpetuate, confusion and noise. Cause the whole children to repeat the correct answer, not in the precise words formerly employed, but by altering or inverting the sentence. Let this inverting process be frequently done, at every leading point of the lesson. This is a fundamental principle of the system, and unless strictly attended to, much of the power of the gallery will be lost. In order to secure that all acquire the knowledge proposed to be communicated, it is not necessary that all answer at any one time, in the first instance; but it is necessary that you secure the eye of the whole children, and as a natural consequence, their attention.

10. Do not say to the child, You are wrong; but endeavour, by exercising his mind, to prove to him that he is wrong, and where he is in error.

11. You must not expect all the children to answer or fill in the ellipses at the same time;* each child will sympathise with that class of questions suited to his own natural cast of mind.

12. The simultaneous method of answering, and the sympathy of the gallery, is vastly more natural and effective than the individual method. You may very soon, by question and answer, exhaust the knowledge of any one child (or pump the well dry;) but you cannot so easily exhaust one hundred seated in a gallery, variously constituted as they are, and all being permitted to answer. The master's duty and privilege, is to be, as it were, the filterer, purifying and directing all the answers, and leading them in a proper channel.

13. Let your uniform practice in every lesson be questions and ellipses mixed, not the mere question and answer system. Remember that the interrogatory system puts the mind too much on the defensive, and is too exciting to lead or train the child easily, naturally, or so efficiently as the union of the two. The question pumps the water, as it were, from the well— the ellipsis directs its course; the master, as we have already said, is the filterer, who sends it back, as it were, in one pure stream to all.

14. A purely elliptical lesson is very tame. Mixed is our principle. The question sets the mind astir, the ellipsis directs what has been set a-moving.

15. In forming an ellipsis, do not raise your voice so as to give warning that you are making a pause, otherwise the attention will flag, as the children will oftentimes listlessly wait till they hear such elevation or altered tone of voice.

16. Whenever the children cannot readily fill in the ellipsis, you have not trained them properly up to that point.

17. Never form an ellipsis in the course of a question.

18. In forming an ellipsis, do not give the first syllable of the word: thus, do not form an el...lipsis in such a manner.

19. Question and answer is not training; simple ellipsis is not training; but question and ellipsis mixed is training.

20. An ellipsis is a powerful and very natural link in training, but if not judiciously made, may become very unmeaning and trifling. The ellipsis to be filled in, ought always to be some word or words which the children ought to know, or which they have at the time been trained to, and which, when so expressed by the children, while it awakens attention, fixes the whole point in the memory.

21. An ellipsis may be made in mental exercises with pupils of any age. The younger and more ignorant the person is, the more frequently will it

See Illustration.