children were at the time of their entrance. That some, who know well the mass of pollution from which many of these poor children have been taken, should display so little interest in the character of their day-school instruction, is, I confess, surprising and perplexing. Neither day-schools nor Sundayschools have yet taken that hold on the affections of the church which they deserve. I am informed that a few years ago, in the United States, the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut, three of the judges of Pennsylvania, and ten or twelve of their most distinguished lawyers, were Sunday-school teachers. This is as it should be. "If this world is to become a better and a happier world, not our Sunday-schools merely, but all our schools, from the infant-school to the university, must be under the superintendence of the best and wisest of the community."

18. One other observation will conclude this letter. No man can be happy as a teacher, who is not prepared to devote all his powers to the performance of its duties. Fellenberg does not ask too much, in demanding for this office "a vigilance that never sleeps, a perseverance that never tires." Nothing short of this will suffice. How strange then is the delusion of those who rush towards it, as the elysium of indolence! That such should be unhappy in the employment, is a source of gratification rather than of regret. Let them flee to some other occupation,

* Woodbridge.

for here they will find no resting-place for the soles of their feet. The motto of Luther, “Work on earth, and rest in heaven," must be the motto of every faithful schoolmaster; and he who is not prepared to live and act in this spirit, had better leave the service to warmer hearts and nobler minds. Such a man will never know any thing of the elevated delights which associate themselves with the employment; he may have the drudgery, but he will not find the pleasures of the exercise; he belongs to that class, of whom Fenelon beautifully says, in relation to another (and yet not another) service, "They perceive what it deprives them of, but they do not see what it bestows; they exaggerate its sacrifices, without looking at its consolations." How can such as these know any thing of the pleasantness of teaching?

LETTER III. TO THE SAME.

GOVERNMENT OF A SCHOOL.

19. "That lad," said Dr. Johnson, when speaking of a sullen and unhappy boy, "looks like the son of a school-master;" which, added he, "is one of the very worst conditions of childhood. Such a boy has no father, or worse than none; he never can reflect on his parent, but the reflection brings to his mind some idea of pain inflicted, or of sorrow suffered." Can we wonder that an office, which, in the eye even of the great moralist, (himself a teacher,) was thus associated with every thing that is hateful and degrading, should, by almost common consent, be looked upon with a feeling bordering on contempt ?

20. I have already observed (12) that children must be governed to a great extent in the same way as men are, viz. by the adaptation of plans to the [fixed and uniform tendencies of human nature. At the same time, it is fully allowed, that the government of a school is necessarily arbitrary in its character; it must be power, exercised by the

will of one man, according to circumstances of which

he alone is the judge.

Now there are two ways, and but two ways, of obtaining power of this description, one is by force, the other, by influence. Both are necessary in their places, according to the age and character of those who are the subjects of discipline; but both are not equally suitable for the school. An infant cannot be reasoned with, and therefore Locke was right in commending the mother who whipped her baby eight times before she subdued it; for had she stopped at the seventh act of correction, her daughter would have been ruined.* But a child of eight or ten years of age is to some extent a reasonable being; and therefore Dr. Johnson was wrong in arguing, in defence of Hastie, that school-boys "can be governed only by fear; that no stated rules can ascertain the degrees of scholastic, more than of military punishment, but that it must be enforced till it overpowers temptation, till stubbornness becomes flexible and perverseness regular." Lord Mansfield, in his judgment on the same case, which he pronounced in the House of Lords, showed

* Dr. Bryce thinks, that in very early infancy, pain has a moral as well as a physical effect,-the effect which a blister has on the body, producing what is medically termed counter irritation. Thus the child's attention is withdrawn by the present pain from the fretfulness which made it unhappy, its happiness is restored, and good is done by the diversion of its mind from a bad object. In well-regulated infant-schools, however, very young children are governed without any corporal punishment.

himself in this instance, both a wiser and a better man, when he exclaimed, "My Lords, severity is not the way to govern either boys or men.”*

21. Let us then try to find out "a more excellent way." Putting aside, therefore, the old notion of brute force, as unfit to be applied for the purposes of government, when the reasoning powers are possessed and developed, let us see how moral means, or what we term influence, may be brought to bear in this service.

22. The first thing to be attended to in every school is GOOD ORDER. This point, not less essential to the comfort of the teacher, and to the communication of instruction, than it is to the happiness and the moral welfare of the child, must be gained at all hazards. The want of order is the great master defect of nearly all schools. I know of no one thing which so powerfully counteracts the exertions of teachers as this want of good discipline.+ It is a great mistake to attend to instruction as the first thing; the love of order, punctuality, and

* Dr. Johnson's argument in this case may be found at length in the Appendix to Boswell's Johnson, vol. iii. Murray's edition.

+ It will be seen that I use this word here, and I shall do so in future, in its modern and limited sense, as referring to control; and not in its more legitimate and extended signification, as relating to the whole course of instruction. I make this remark because Professor Pillans, in his very useful "Letters on Elementary Teaching," adopts the latter sense, as corresponding to disciplina, in the writings of Cicero and Quintilian.