teaching in each class should evidently be as self-contained and complete as it can be made, consistently with the future progress of the successful few.

The junior class, the Clares, have completed in one term all the political economy which had been marked out for the year (two terms); and there is no reason to doubt that what these have done future first year's classes will be able also to do. I would not, however, introduce these junior students to such authors as Mill and Ricardo, but wait the improvement, both of their English and of their general intelligence, which must occur during the 2nd term, and the sifting and winnowing at the subsequent scholarship examination, and so begin Mill with the more select and more advanced class of West scholars. The Clares, however, may be most usefully employed during the 2nd term in acquiring, from treatises more popular and elementary, a fund of collateral information connected with the subject; and, with this object in view, I have ventured (on my own responsibility) to send home for a supply of Knight's Results of Machinery, and Labour and Capital, and of Babbage's Economy of Manufactures. These are admirable books to have read, even for those whose education must end with the year; and will furnish a most desirable foundation of facts, thought, and information generally, for the best men prior to their study, in the 2nd and 3rd years, of Mill and Ricardo.

Logic, at the commencement of the term, was a new subject, (inevitably to the new Clares,) but new also on this occasion to the Normals and to a portion of the Wests,-to that portion which had failed to obtain Normal scholarships at last examination, and were, in accordance with the old regulations, to repeat their year in the West class. It was thought desirable, therefore, that the subject should be studied from the commencement.

The books used have been, Whately's Elements (the 9th edition), and his elementary epitome, the "Easy Lessons on Reasoning. The questions given at the examination, (page 34), and marks obtained for answers (pages 23, 24), will, I think, show that the subject has been very successfully studied during the term, and indeed, that nearly as much acquaintance with formal syllogistic logic has been obtained as it is probably desirable to introduce into our course of teaching. The normal scholars are now commencing a book which will probably tax their powers rather highly, viz. Mill's

"System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive." The Clares and Wests will complete their year with Whately, in whose treatise they have yet to study the very important Chapters on Fallacies, and will also revise for the approaching scholarship examination the portions they have already studied.

The questions, and tables of marks obtained for answering, to which allusion has already been made, are in themselves so complete a report, both of the manner in which the subjects have been studied, and of the acquirements of the classes, that any further detail would appear to be superfluous. As, however, the method of teaching these subjects, which after some experiments with the classes, and a good deal of thought upon the subject, I have for some time now been led to adopt, appears to me to be exceedingly effective, it may, perhaps, be allowable to state very briefly in what it consists. We will suppose a class assembled to commence the term. Each student has been required to furnish himself with a copy of each of the text-books used, and must of course be provided with a note-book. The first lesson will consist in dictating, with the least possible periphrase, and in a series of rapid and brief notes, all the points in a portion of the author which they are about to study -the skeleton of the argument, to be filled up by their subsequent reading-together with explanations of all allusions concerning which any difficulty may be anticipated, and whatever of general information, illustration, or direction may appear desirable to facilitate their subsequent study of the author in private. With the assistance of the notes which he thus carries away, the student is now expected to "make up" the portion pointed out, and, at the next meeting of his class for this subject (two days subsequently), to submit to an examination in it. Previously, however, to this examination he states (in the class), for the purpose of having them cleared up, any difficulties which, notwithstanding the preliminary assistance he has received, may have occurred to him; and these all explained, either by a fellow-student or by the Professor, the examination proceeds, and is followed by similar assistance and direction concerning the succeeding portion of the text-book. The examinations are partly oral, and partly in writing; and any portion of the subject which appears to have been imperfectly apprehended or imperfectly made up is, it need scarcely be said, carefully re-studied. With respect to the necessary collateral information, the students, whenever it is

possible, are rather directed when and how to read it for themselves, than allowed to waste the short hour which the Professor has to spend with them in taking down long notes upon it; and the continually-recurring examinations are so contrived as to test and insure a compliance with the directions thus given. The object, in short, constantly kept in view, being to teach the pupil the art, and give him the habit of private study, and to render the work in the classroom an assistance and an incentive to a much greater amount of work in private; and the method adopted being summed up in two phrases-preliminary notes and directions for reading, and subsequent searching examinations, both oral and written.

The requisite amount of examination in these subjects could not be obtained without resorting largely to oral questioning, which is moreover a most useful practice in itself, tending to cultivate in the student a facility and readiness which hardly any other lesson in the course of his studies would be likely to give him. But the written exercises appear to me to have had, in addition to their direct and obvious uses, a secondary one of such importance that I do not like to conclude this first Report of our experiences in the new course of studies without some allusion to it. I believe that, in addition to the purposes for which they were more expressly set, the essays and written answers in political economy and logic will be found to have had a most useful indirect effect,-as exercises in the verbal expression of close consecutive reasoning, -as tending greatly to correct in our students a fault to which young writers, and especially young native ones, are proverbially prone-the fault of diffuse, vague, and inflated declamation, -as compelling a careful attention in their compositions to the value and accurate use of words, and to the logical connexion and sequence of their ideas,-and as forming a most desirable connecting link between the mathematical reasoning, scarcely dependent on ordinary language at all, of one part of our College course, and the cultivation of a literary taste in the students, and a talent for narration, which are among the valuable results of another portion; and I am convinced that, with such authors as Ricardo, John S. Mill, and Whately, as models, the studies in political economy and logic, apart from the intrinsic value which the subjects themselves possess, have been in the highest degree useful as exercises in thought, and in the habit of terse and logical composition.

H. GREEN.

The paper questions on political economy in the Normal class were kindly set, it will be seen, by the Rev. A. G. Fraser. This gentleman returns the answers, after examining them, with the marks which will be found in the Table, and with the following general notice.

H. G.

I consider these essays as possessing very great merit. It is evident to me that the minds of the writers have been very carefully cultivated, and that they have been taught to keep constantly before them thinking and reasoning as the only fountains of style; for the essayists have certainly acquired, or rather developed their own peculiar personal style. The essays are devoid of mannerism, which is always the result of imitation. The discipline of mind which they have received, it is evident to me, is that which arises from important and interesting facts, as the basis of thinking and reasoning. Their education has had very much to do with the practical life to which they are destined,-with things and their relations, which constitute the whole substance of life.

I am fully satisfied, from a careful examination of these essays, that the standard of education has been raised in the Elphinstone Institution, not only as to its quantum, but also in the all-important particular, the mode of instruction. There is every evidence that the mode of instruction which prevails in the Institution is not mechanical, but intellectual in the highest degree.

A. G. FRASER.