critics praise them, and we long ago learned never to waste words in trying to defend our honesty of intention or our fitness for our work, against unbelievers.

Unfortunately for our correspondent's case, the bickerings, jealousies, and intrigues that have disturbed the harmony of New York studios, and that explain the short-comings of the Academy and the poverty of the exhibitions, are so much a matter of notoriety in art-circles that we need not waste words in establishing our case. Nor do we believe with An Academician that our artists have done every year as much work and as good work as they

are capable of. Looking at the exhibition, visiting the studios, frequenting the dealers' galleries, and in general making out to see what is produced in the year, and finding the result so meagre in quantity and thin in quality, we declared that the artists could do much more work, and far better work, if they would improve their time, would work more in seclusion and give up their social and "society" aims altogether. We think our remark more favorable, more complimentary if the reader will, to the artists than that of their would-be defender. At any rate, we said what we did because we believed it to be true.

A GERMAN pamphlet containing the text of the new Prussian scheme of commonschool instruction furnished the subject for some observations in the May Atlantic, wherein the superiority of the Prussian method of treating the branches of elementary education was pointed out. A transla tion of this valuable document, in regard to which many inquiries have been made, will soon be published, and it will doubtless attract much attention among American teachers, as being the latest official statement of the objects, aims, and methods of that system of popular education which is generally conceded to be, on the whole, the best in the world. The most interesting, and perhaps the most important part of this scheme is that which relates to the training of teachers. In Prussia, sooner than else where, it was understood that to have good teachers it is necessary to organize special institutions for their professional education. With us it is too often taken for granted that a reformed programme means a reformed system of education. In Prussia, when an improvement is attempted, either in the matter or form of instruction in the schools, the reform begins with the normal schools. Hence, to understand Prussian education it is necessary to study the history of the development of the Prussian normal schools. Professor Stowe and Mr. Mann described the Prussian system of training teachers as it existed forty years ago, when the aim was less to train the future school-master for the technical work

of teaching children of from eight to four teen to read, write, and cipher, than to give him a complete mental culture. The normal school of that period was a university on a small scale, with its single faculty of Pädagogik, and the normal teacher was a professor, giving his courses of logic, Pädagogik, Didactik, Methodik, anthropology, or psychology. There was too much theoretical lecturing, and not enough practical teaching of the elementary branches and training in the art of school-keeping. The results of this system proved unsatisfactory, and a sounder educational theory at length proscribed both its aim and its method. The reaction against it, however, being greatly intensified by political considerations, was carried too far. The scientific furniture of the old school was discarded, little attention was paid to general culture, and the forming and development of the understanding were too much ignored. The reactionary Regulatire of 1854 did not allow the teaching of systematic pedagogy even in a popular form, prescribing in its place" the art of school management," and limiting the matters taught in the lessons very nearly to the standard of the course in the elementary school. The teaching of method as a separate branch was no longer permitted, and as a part of school management it was to be introduced only so far as necessary to explain the connection between the various parts of elementary teaching, and the relation in which each part stands to the objects of the school and to the edu

cation it is designed to give. Physics, the favorite branch of the old teachers, was turned out of doors, and Heimathskunde, or observation of the phenomena of our own neighborhood, was substituted for it, while general history was supplanted by "history of our fatherland." In teaching German, the "so-called classical literature" of Germany was absolutely prohibited, even for private reading, and in its place a select library, chiefly compilations of modern writers, was ordered for the normal school. Learning by rote was largely substituted for the formal exercise of the understanding, and "instead of knowledge the object proposed to the student was the acquisition of the technical facilities which the children were to learn from him." It is easy to imagine the sort of school-master formed by this system of training. He had too little culture and knowledge, and hence too little intellectual independence. With limited power of comprehending principles, he was necessarily confined to a mechanical routine. In technical skill, within a narrow range, no doubt he excelled; but in educating power, in the capacity to form character, and to inspire his pupils with a worthy ambition, he was sadly deficient. The reform evidently went too far, and overshot the mark. But in the history of Prussian education we do not find a repetition of unsuccessful experiments, and out of all this experience wisdom has been learned. The new reform, as presented in the Regulative of the minister of instruction, contained in the pamphlet under consideration, seems to have avoided both the former extremes, and to have hit the golden mean. The new programme is characterized by a wise moderation. It is proportionate in all its parts. It makes due provision for both general culture and technical skill. In theory and practice it is equally balanced. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another.

Every normal school is to have organically connected with it two practice schools, one graded and the other ungraded. The course of instruction continues three years, the pupils of each year constituting a class. It is the object of the lowest class to bring under uniform training and work students whose previous preparation has been different. They are to be taught to arrange and supplement their knowledge, and to reproduce it independently. In this grade, the students have no connection with the practice schools. In the second class, the students receive such extension of their knowl

edge as they will require in their subsequent work as teachers. In the practice schools, they listen to the exercises of the teachers, in which, at intervals, they render assistance, and make trials independently in teaching. In the first class, where the course is concluded, the pupils are espe cially instructed with reference to their fut ure self-culture. Besides, they undertake, under the guidance and oversight of the principal and instructors of the practice schools, continuous instruction in the same. In this practice they are to be occupied not less than six nor more than ten hours a week, and the programme must be so arranged that no pupil will leave the training seminary without having had an opportunity to practice the teaching of all the essential branches prescribed for the common schools. In the Prussian seminaries for teachers the practicing school is the point round which the whole of the instruction turns. And herein they are vastly superior to our American normal schools, which are rarely provided with any practicing school at all. Hence our normal schools are too theoretical. Like the Prussian normal schools of forty years ago, they are aiming too exclusively at general culture, and not enough at practical skill. They send out pupils largely imbued with good principles, but lamentably deficient in the technical skill they need in the school-room. Under the head of "Pedagogy," in the new scheme, the following are the require

ments:

"Lowest class, two hours a week. The students are instructed in the essential points with regard to the history of education and instruction, by means of sketches of the most prominent men, of the most agitated periods, of the most interesting and successful improvements in the sphere of the common school. An introduction to the principal works of pedagogical literature, especially those of the period since the Reformation, will serve to supplement and illustrate the above sketches. The reading is to be so arranged that the discussion of some pedagogical question will naturally be suggested by it. And this discussion is to be conducted in such a way that the students will learn to comprehend intelligently and independently the contents of a more or less lengthy treatment.

"Middle class, two hours. In general, on the subjects of education and instruction (Instruction, Form of Instruction, Educa

tion by Instruction), including what is necessary in logic and psychology.

"Upper class, three hours. In particular, on the mode of teaching (Method). Office of the school. Administration of the school. More extended duties of the teacher and his self-improvement. The students are made acquainted with the general regulations regarding common-school instruction current in the department for which they are being directly prepared. The principal of the school of practice treats of the observations made by himself in reference to the work of the pupils in the same, and such as have been communicated to him by the instructors in the different departments."

Within the limits of this judicious outline the director of each normal school is to arrange a particular programme for instruction in this branch in his institution, which must be submitted for approval to the minister of instruction. And so of all the other required subjects of instruction, namely, religion, German, history, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, natural history, physics, chemistry, geography, drawing, writing, gymnastics, music; the French, English, or Latin language; gardening, and silk-culture. The information which the students receive in all these branches is to be in its form a sample of that which they will later have to impart as teachers. The courses on German and music are especially elaborate and comprehensive. To the former are given five hours a week during the first two years, and two during the third; and to the latter the same in the lower classes, and three hours in the highest. The reason why so much time is devoted to music is that the seminary has to form not only the teacher of singing for the school, but the organist and the precentor for the church. The course in this branch therefore comprises not only singing and harmony, but instruction on the violin, piano, and organ.

This scheme of normal training is preceded by a detailed statement of the qualifications requisite for admission to the normal seminary, with specific directions as to the examination of candidates, and followed by the revised regulations respecting the examination of teachers for the different grades of common schools.

All educational interests centre in the teacher, and the test of every system of education is found in its provisions for securing competent teachers. Here is the

weak point in the systems in our several States. Nowhere is there anything like adequate provision either for educating professionally a supply of teachers, or for duly testing their qualifications. In this general lack of the necessary means of securing skillful teachers, is found the chief cause of the unsatisfactory results of our schools, especially those outside the cities and larger villages. In our efforts to supply this deficiency we shall do well to avail ourselves of the results of the experience of that country which has always been foremost in this matter, and especially of the results embodied in this new scheme.

-This edition of a part of Virgil1 belongs to the new series prepared by Messrs. W. F. and J. H. Allen, and J. B. Greenough. But we believe we are not wrong in attributing the chief share in the work before us to Professor Greenough.

Frequent regrets have been expressed of late that the funds devoted by private and public generosity to the purposes of college education have been frittered away among a large number of small and often weak institutions all over the country, instead of being concentrated in a small number of strong ones. For precisely similar reasons we regret that the advancing scholarship of our country is spending itself on a great variety of school books traversing a limited ground, so that every year sees one or more arithmetics, readers, geographies, Ciceros, coming from the publishing houses of various cities, no one of each kind so transcendently better that it must absorb the whole demand for new text-books on its subject. It is perfectly natural that each publisher should wish to have his "series" outstrip that of his rival. But it is hard to see how he will further this end by turning the attention of the editors he secures to the very same classics which have already been treated with considerable success elsewhere, and which, from the nature of the case, give scope for little more than selection and rearrangement of the investigations of European scholars. If by any conceivable joining of forces, such scholars as Professor Greenough of Cambridge and Professor Chase of Haverford could have supplemented and not conflicted with each other, we believe that Virgil and Cicero would both have been better edited than they are in either the Boston or the Phil1 The Poems of Virgil. Vol. I. Containing the Pastoral Poems and Six Books of the Æneid. Boston: Ginn Brothers

adelphia " series," not that Professor Chase ought to be charged with the faults of the Philadelphia Cicero.

If we believed that the multiplication of Virgils would forever banish such farragos as "Cooper," we should hail every new one. But we regret to see how even teachers who aim as high as Mr. Greenough often continue the old practice of furnishing pupils with a translation of the poet's puzzling phrases, without showing the reasons for selecting English so far from the Latin in looks. Hence it comes that boys are jumped, so to speak, over Virgil, and leave it loudly asserting that the last books of the Eneid, over which they were carried two hundred lines a lesson, are easy - easier than Cicero's Orations; when every scholar, the longer he studies them, finds it harder to translate them, or, rather, to account for his translation. We would point to the translations of this edition of Æn. I. 543, II. 85, III. 429, as likely to give more trouble than help in the next case where the same words occurred, though saving dictionary work at the moment. One great, perhaps the greatest, practical use of classical study is now recognized by all good teachers to be the cultivation of the analytical faculty, by compelling boys to melt down, as it were, the vocabulary and idioms of the ancient languages, and recast the matter into those of their own-a process sadly unnerved by a profusion of ready-made translations, even if they are as succinct and elegant as Mr. Greenough's. One case where we seem to see this fault is the second half of his note on Æn. II. 460; the first half is a most capital illustration from a real and noted building; it had occurred to us many years ago, but we have never noticed it before in print.

As a case where Mr. Greenough for the first time for a century (since Heyne, 1767) explains a passage rightly, we would point to his note on Æn. VI. 567, which we earnestly commend to teachers who still wallow in the absurdity of calling castigatque auditque a hysteron proteron.

It was to be expected from Mr. Greenough's Grammar that he would give boys a considerable taste of comparative philol ogy. We own to great fears as to the value of this study. Not that it will not

1 History of Germany. By JAMES SIME, M. A. Edited by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D. C. L. Edition

interest young pupils; on the contrary, we know by experience that it often interests them so much to consider what the prehistoric Aryans probably said, that they get hazy on what the historic Mantuan did say. One youth, who was rather a dab at Grimm's law, told his teacher that Horace, Odes I. xvi. 4, referred to the Emperor Ha drian. A somewhat similar remark might be made as to the introduction of recent theories on Roman Antiquities, which are so alien to what Virgil supposed to be true that they may sometimes puzzle students who are in the elements.

We regret that Mr. Greenough has followed Ribbeck's text. On Æn. IV. 436 he confesses the absurdity of Ribbeck's monte, -no worse, by the way, than Schrader's sorte or Burmann's forte, but why does he recognize, in his note on Æn. III. 705, the preposterous velis, which neither Ribbeck nor Mr. Greenough dare to make supersede ventis in the text, to which our present editor's excellent note accurately though unconsciously applies? On Æn. II. 445 we think the evidence for tota very weak.

The typographical execution is generally excellent; but we notice an awkward blunder in the note to Æn. II. 98.

-The History of Germany 1 is the latest that has appeared in Mr. Freeman's historical course for schools, and it bears a close resemblance to the rest in its merits and in its one possible fault, that of too great compression. Like many text-books these may be better for teachers than for scholars, since they give hardly more than brief outlines; but great pains have been taken to make the outlines correct, and in that respect they excel most of their rivals. They cannot be too warmly praised if they are used by good teachers, who are able to fill up the arid record by copious explanations and illustrations, and it is too much to ask of a text-book that it shall fully take the place of an intelligent teacher. What is particularly good in most of the books of this series is the discreet omission of idle facts which only burden the memory, and the presentation of the history as an or ganic whole and not a mere succession in time of disconnected incidents. We know none of the same pretensions which are better.

adapted for American Readers. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1874.

MADAME BLUMENTHAL seemed, for the time, to have abjured the Kursaal, and I never caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently, was an interesting study; she wished to pursue it undiverted.

She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the opera, where from my chair I perceived her in a box, looking extremely pretty. Adelina Patti was singing, and after the rising of the curtain I was occupied with the stage; but on looking round when it fell for the entr'acte, I saw that the authoress of Cleopatra had been joined by her young admirer. He was sitting a little behind her, leaning forward, looking over her shoulder and listening, while she, slowly moving her fan to and fro and letting her eye wander over the house, was apparently talking of this person and that. No doubt she was saying sharp things; but Pickering was not laughing; his eyes were following her covert indications; his mouth was half open, as it always was when he was interested; he looked intensely serious. I was glad that, having her back to him, she was unable to see how he looked. It seemed the proper moment to present myself and make her my bow; but just as I was about to

leave my place, a gentleman, whom in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance, came to occupy the next chair. Recognition and mutual greetings followed, and I was forced to postpone my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not sorry, for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer would be just the man to give me a fair prose version of Pickering's lyrical tributes to his friend. He was an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about Europe a great deal, in a series of small diplomatic posts. England especially he had often visited, and he spoke the language almost without accent. I had once spent three rainy days with him in the house of an English friend, in the country. He was a sharp observer and a good deal of a gossip; he knew a little something about every one, and about some people everything. His knowledge on social matters generally had the flavor of all German science; it was copious, minute, exhaustive. "Do tell me," I said, as we stood looking round the house, who and what is the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind her."

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