time, six at another, and two at another, and if twelve is the number which entitles to a ticket, one will be given without any stopping or speaking,-for the teacher and pupil appear to have kept a silent reckoning, and when the latter extends his hand, the former gives a ticket without any suspension of the lesson. This gives the greatest intensity to competition; and at such times, the children have a look of almost maniacal eagerness and anxiety.

I have said that questions were put by the teacher with a rapidity almost incredible. When once put, however, if not answered, they are rarely stated again in words. If the first pupil cannot answer, the teacher seldom stops to say 'Next,' but,-every pupil having his eye on the teacher, and being alive in every sense and faculty, and the teacher walking up and down before the class, and gesticulating vehemently, with his arm extended, and accompanying each motion with his eye, he points to the next and the next, until perhaps, if the question is difficult, he may have indicated each one in a section, but obtained an answer from none; then he throws his arm and eye around towards one side of the room, inviting a reply from any one, and, if still unsuccessful, he sweeps them across the other side,-and all this will take but half a minute. Words being too slow and cumbrous, the language of signs prevails; and the parties being all eye and ear, the interchange of ideas has an electric rapidity. While the teacher turns his face and points his finger towards a dozen pupils consecutively, inviting a reply, perhaps a dozen arms will be extended towards him from other sections or divisions of the class, giving notice that they are ready to respond; and in this way a question will be put to a class of fifty, sixty or eighty pupils, in half a minute of time.

Nor is this all. The teacher does not stand immovably fixed to one spot, (I never saw a teacher in Scotland sitting in a schoolroom,) nor are the bodies of the pupils mere blocks, resting motionless in their seats, or lolling from side to side as though life were deserting them. The custom is for each pupil to rise when giving an answer. This is ordinarily done so quick, that the body of the pupil, darting from the sitting into the standing posture, and then falling back into the first position, seems more like some instrument sent suddenly forwards by a mechanical force and then rapidly withdrawn, than like the rising and sitting of a person in the ordinary way. But it is obvious that the scene becomes full of animation, when,-leave being given to a whole division of a class to answer,-a dozen or twenty at once spring to their feet and ejaculate at the top of their voices. The moment it is seen that the question has been rightly answered, and this is instantaneously shown by the manner of the teacher, all fall back, and another question is put. If this is not answered, almost before an attentive spectator can understand it, the teacher extends his arm and flashes his eye to the next, and the next, and so on, and when a rapid signal is given to another side of the room, a dozen pupils leap to the floor and vociferate a reply.

Nor can the faintest picture of these exciting scenes be given, without introducing something of the technical phraseology used in the school.

If a pupil is not prompt at the moment, and if the teacher means

to insist upon an answer from him, (for it will not do to pass by a scholar always, however dull,) he exclaims, in no very moderate or gentle voice, 'Come away,' or 'Come away now ;'-and if the first does not answer and the next does, he directs the latter to pass above the former by the conventional phrase, 'Take him down.' "If a whole section stands at fault, for a moment, and then one leaps up and shouts out the reply, the teacher exclaims 'Dux boy,' which means that the one who answered shall take the head of the class.

Suppose the teacher to be hearing his class in a reading-lesson, and that the word 'impediment' occurs, something very like the following scene may take place.

Teacher. Impediment,' from what Latin words?
Pupil. In and pes.

T. What does it mean?

P. To oppose something against the feet,-to keep them back. T. How is the word 'pes' used in statuary?

P. In pedestal,—the block on which a statue is raised.

T. In architecture?

P. Pedal, a part of an organ moved by the feet.

T. In botany?

P. Pedicle, or footstalk of a flower.

T. Give me a verb.

P. Impede.

T. A noun.

P. Impediment.

T. An adjective, which imports despatch in the absence of obstacles.

P. Expeditious.

T. An adjective, meaning desirable or conducive.

P. (Hesitates.) T. Come away. (To the next.) Come away. (He now points to half a dozen in succession, giving to each not more than a twinkling of time.)

Ninth Pupil. Expedient.

7. Take 'em down. (This pupil then goes above eight.)

All this does not occupy half the time in the class that it takes to read an account of it.

In a school where a recitation in Latin was going on, I witnessed a scene, of this kind;-the room, unlike the rooms where the children of the common people are taught, was large. Seventy or eighty boys sat on deskless, backless benches, arranged on three sides of a square or parallelogram. A boy is now called upon to recite,-to parse a Latin noun, for instance. But he does not respond quite so quickly as the report of a gun follows the flash. The teacher cries out, 'Come away.' The boy errs, giving perhaps a wrong gender, or saying that it is derived from a Greek verb, when, in fact, it is derived from a Greek noun of the same family. Twenty boys leap forward into the area,—as though the house were on fire, or a mine or an ambush had been sprung upon them,-and shout out the true answer in a voice that could be heard forty rods. And so the recitation proceeds for an hour.

25

To an unaccustomed spectator, on entering one of these rooms, all seems uproar, turbulence and the contention of angry voices,-the teacher traversing the space before his class, in a state of high excitement, the pupils springing from their seats, darting to the middle of the floor, and sometimes, with extended arms, forming a circle around him, two, three, or four deep,-every finger quivering from the intensity of their emotions-until some more sagacious mind, outstripping its rivals, solves the difficulty,-when all are in their seats again, as though by magic, and ready for another encounter of

wits.

I have seen a school kept for two hours in succession, in this state of intense mental activity, with nothing more than an alteration of subjects during the time, or perhaps the relaxation of singing. At the end of the recitation, both teacher and pupils would glow with heat, and be covered with perspiration, as though they had been contending in the race or the ring. It would be utterly impossible for the children to bear such fiery excitement, if the physical exercise were not as violent as the mental is intense. But children who actually leap into the air from the energy of their impulses, and repeat this as often as once in two minutes, on an average, will not suffer from suppressed activity of the muscular system.

The mental labor performed in a given period in the schools, by children under the age of twelve or fourteen years, is certainly many times greater than I have ever seen in any schools of our own, composed of children as young. With us, the lower classes do not ordinarily work more than half the time while they are in the schoolroom. Even many members of the reciting classes are drowsy, and listless, and evidently following some train of thought,-if they are thinking at all,-whose scene lies beyond the walls of the schoolhouse,-rather than applying their minds to the subject-matter of the lesson, or listening to those who are reciting, or feigning to recite it. But in the mode above described, there is no sleepiness, no droning, no inattention. The moment an eye wanders, or a countenance becomes list-` less, it is roused by a special appeal; and the contagion of the excitement is so great as to operate upon every mind and frame that pp. 100-104. is not an absolute non-conductor to life."

Mr. Mann spent about two months in visiting the schools of Prussia and Saxony and the German States, representing altogether a population of about twenty millions. It was impossible for him, in so short a space of time, to visit all the schools of those countries, nor was this necessary in order to enable him to form a correct estimate of the plans of education and discipline pursued in them. In respect to the general organization and maintenance of the Prussian and other German schools, he refers his readers to the wellknown Report of M. Cousin, formerly Minister of Public Instruction in France; to that of Dr. Bache, late Professor of Girard College, in respect to the charitable foundations for instruction in Europe; to the Report of Professor Stowe,

made to the General Assembly of Ohio, in 1837, and to various articles on the subject published, within the last twenty years, in reviews and periodicals. He dwells, at some length, upon the schools for the instruction of orphans, who, owing to the ravages of war, are very numerous in those countries, and upon schools connected with prisons. A very interesting account is given of the Redemption Institute at Hamburgh, which beautifully illustrates the influence of proper moral training in the reformation of vicious children.

The method of teaching young children upon their first entering a Prussian school, is thus described:

"I entered a classroom of sixty children, of about six years of age. The children were just taking their seats, all smiles and expectation. They had been at school but a few weeks, but long enough to have _contracted a love for it. The teacher took his station before them, [and after making a playful remark which excited a light titter around the room, and effectually arrested attention, he gave a signal for silence. After waiting a moment, during which every countenance was composed and every noise hushed, he made a prayer consisting of a single sentence, asking that as they had come together to learn, they might be good and dilligent. He then spoke to them of the beautiful day, asked what they knew about the seasons, referred to the different kinds of fruit-trees then in bearing, and questioned them upon the uses of trees in constructing houses, furniture, &c. Frequently he threw in sportive remarks which enlivened the whole school, but without ever producing the slightest symptom of disorder.} During this familiar conversation, which lasted about twenty minutes, there was nothing frivolous or trifling in the manner of the teacher; that manner was dignified though playful, and the little jets of laughter which he caused the children occasionally to throw out, were much more favorable to a receptive state of mind than jets of tears. Here I must make a preliminary remark, in regard to the equipments of the scholars and the furniture of the schoolroom. Every child had a slate and pencil, and a little reading book of letters, words, and short sentences. Indeed, I never saw a Prussian or Saxon school,—above an infant school,-in which any child was unprovided with a slate and pencil. By the teacher's desk, and in front of the school, hung a blackboard. The teacher first drew a house upon the blackboard; and here the value of the art of drawing,—a power universally possessed by Prussian teachers, became manifest. By the side of the drawing and under it, he wrote the word house in the German script hand, and printed it in the German letter With a long pointing rod,-the end being painted white to make it more visible, he ran over the form of the letters,-the children, with their slates before them and their pencils in their hands, looking at the pointing rod and tracing the forms of the letter in the air. In all our good schools, children are first taught to imitate the forms of letters on the slate before they write them on paper; here they were first imitated on the air, then on slates, and subsequently, in older

classes, on paper. The next process was to copy the word 'house,' both in script and in print, on their slates. Then followed the formation of the sounds of the letters of which the word was composed, and the spelling of the word. Here the names of the letters were not given as with us, but only their powers, or the sounds which those letters have in combination. The letter h was first selected and set up in the reading-frame, (the same before described as part of the apparatus of Prussian schools for young children,) and the children, instead of articulating our alphabetic h, (aitch,) merely gave a hard breathing,-such a sound as the letter really has in the word house.' Then the diphthong, au, (the German word for 'house' is spelled 'haus.') was taken and sounded by itself, in the same way. Then the blocks containing h, and au, were brought together, and the two sounds were combined. Lastly, the letter s was first sounded by itself, then added to the others, and then the whole word was spoken. Sometimes the last letter in a word was first taken and sounded, after that the penultimate, and so on until the word was completed. The responses of the children were sometimes individual, and sometimes simultaneous, according to a signal given by the master.

In every such school, also, there are printed sheets orcards containing the letters, dipthongs and whole words. The children are taught to sound a dipthong, and then asked in what words that sound occurs. On some of these cards there are words enough to make several short sentences, and when the pupils are a little advanced, the teacher points to several isolated words in succession, which when taken together make a familiar sentence, and thus he gives them an agreeable surprise, and a pleasant initiation into reading.7

After the word 'house' was thus completely impressed upon the minds of the children, the teacher drew his pointing rod over the lines which formed the house; and the children imitated him, first in the air, while they were looking at his motions, then on their slates, In their drawings there was of course a great variety as to taste and accuracy; but each seemed pleased with his own, for their first attempts had never been so criticised as to produce discouragement. Several children were then called to the blackboard to draw a house with chalk. After this, the teacher entered into a coversation about houses. The first question was, what kind of a house was that on the blackboard. Then the names of other kinds of houses were given. The materials of which houses are built were mentioned,-stone, brick, wood; the different kinds of wood; nails, and where they were made; lime, and whence it came, &c. &c. When the teacher touched upon points with which the children were supposed to be acquainted, he asked questions; when he passed to subjects beyond their sphere, he gave information, intermingling the whole with lively remarks and pleasant anecdotes.

[And here one important particular should not be omitted. In this, as well as in all other schools, a complete answer was always required. For instance, if a teacher asks, 'What are houses made of?' he does not accept the answer, 'of wood' or 'of stone;' but he requires a full, complete, (vollständig) answer ;-as, 'a house may be made of wood.' The answer must always contain an intelligible