In the country, and in small villages, there will be no difficulty, to a liberal and enlightened community or committee, in procuring a spacious lot, attractive from its choice of sun and shade, of trees and flowers, and commanding, in one or more directions, the cheap yet priceless educating influences of fine scenery.

In city or country, a site should be provided, large enough to admit of a yard in front of the building, either common to the whole school, or appropriated to greensward, flowers, and shrubbery, and two yards in the rear, one for each sex. properly graded, inclosed, and fitted up with apparatus for recreation and exercise in all states of the weather, and with privies, which a civilized people never forgets, and in respect to which the most perfect seclusion, neatness, and propriety should be enforced.

The extent to which facilities for gymnastic and calisthenic exercises shall be introduced into the play-ground, must be determined by the circumstances of the school, and mainly by the place which they are to occupy as part of the physical education of the pupils. For purposes of recreation, except in the simplest and cheapest form, and for very young children, and at all times under the direction and supervision of the teacher, who should be specially trained to superintend the exercises and amusements of the play ground, this apparatus has not much value. When pursued at all times, without system, without reference to age, or strength, or the purposes intended, without direction, from day to day for a whole term, the exercises become wearisome, the apparatus is abused, and serious accidents not unfrequently occur. But when gymnastics can be taught and practiced as a regular branch of education-when the more difficult fetes of activity, strength, and endurance, are attained by elementary trials of various sorts, graduated to the age and constitution of each pupil, and so alternated as to keep the interest constantly alive-when walking exercises in the field, or to remarkable places, and even ordinary spots, are occasionally substituted for the military drill, and running, leaping, vaulting, balancing, climbing, and lifting, in the gymnasiumwhen the incidental acquisition of the moral habits of cleanliness in person, neatness in dress, punctuality, promptitude, and obedience. is made a matter of even greater importance than the direct result of muscular development, an erect and graceful carriage, a firm and regular step, which are the direct objects of these exercises-then, they are truly valuable, and every facility for their introduction should be provided in the play ground. Whenever introduced, the machines and instruments should be constructed of the best material and by the best workmen, for life and limb must not be endangered to save expense in these respects.

The following cuts and description may be useful to an ingenious carpenter, who can not consult a systematic treatise on gymnastics.* The cut which follows, of a play-ground for an infant, or primary school, is copied from Wilderspin's Early Education. We should prefer to see a female teacher presiding over the scene.

See INSTRUCTIONS IN GYMNASTICs, containing a full description of more than eight hundred exercises, and illustrated by five hundred engravings, By J. E. D'Alfonce, late pro fessor of Gymnastics in the Military School in St. Petersburgh, and in Paris. New York: George F. Nesbit & Co., Wall street. 1851.

The house should stand in a dry and airy situation, large enough to allow a spacious play ground. No pains should be spared on this principal and paramount department of a proper infant school. The more extensive the ground may be, the better; but the smallest size for 200 children ought to be 100 feet in length, by at least 60 in breadth. It should be walled round, not so much to prevent the children from straying, as to exclude intruders upon them, while at play: for this purpose, a wall or close paling, not lower than six feet high, will be found sufficient. With the exception of a flower border, from four to six feet broad all round, lay the whole ground, after leveling and draining it thoroughly, with small binding gravel, which must be always kept in repair, and well swept of loose stones. Watch the gravel, and prevent the children making holes in it to form pools in wet weather; dress the flower border, and keep it always neat; stock it well with flowers and shrubs, and make it as gay and beautiful as possible. Train on the walls cherry and other fruit trees and currant bushes; place some ornaments and tasteful decorations in different parts of the border-as a honeysuckle bower, &c., and separate the dressed ground from the graveled area by a border of strawberry plants, which may be protected from the feet of the children by a skirting of wood on the outside, three inches high, and painted green, all round the ground. Something even approaching to elegance in the dressing and decking of the playground, will afford a lesson which may contribute to refinement and comfort for life. It will lead not only to clean and comfortable dwellings, but to a taste for decoration and beauty, which will tend mainly to expel coarseness, discomfort, dirt, and vice, from the economy of the humbler classes.

For the excellent and safe exercise afforded by the Rotary Swing, erect, at the distance of thirty feet from each other, two posts or masts, from sixteen to eighteen feet high above the ground; nine inches diameter at the foot, diminishing to seven and a

half at top; of good wellseasoned, hard timber; charred with fire, about three feet under ground, fixed in sleepers, and bound at top with a strong iron hoop. In the middle of the top of the post is sunk perpendicularly a cylindrical hole, ten inches deep, and two inches in diameter, made strong by an iron ring two inches broad within the top, and by a piece of iron an inch thick to fill up the bottom, tightly fixed in. A strong pivot of iron, of diameter to turn easily in the socket described, but with as little lateral play as possible, is placed vertically in the hole, its upper end standing 4 inches above it. On this pivot, as an axle, and close to the top of the post, but so as to turn easily, is fixed a wheel of iron, twentyfour inches diameter, strengthened by four

spokes, something like a common roasting-jack wheel, but a little larger. The rim should be flat, two inches broad, and half an inch thick. In this rim are six holes or eyes, in which rivet six strong iron hooks, made to turn in the holes, to prevent the rope from twisting. To these hooks are fixed six wellchosen ropes, an inch diameter, and each reaching down to within two feet of the ground, having half-a-dozen knots, or small wooden balls, fixed with nails, a foot from each other, beginning at the lower extremity, and ascending to six feet from the ground. A tin cap, like a lamp cover, is placed on the top of the whole machine, fixed to the prolongation of the pivot, and a little larger than the wheel, to protect it from wet. To this, or to the wheel itself, a few waggoners' bells appended, would have a cheerful effect on the children. The operation of this swing must, from the annexed cut, be obvious. Four, or even six children, lay hold of a rope each, as high as they can reach, and, starting at the same instant, run a few steps in the circle, then suspend themselves by their hands, drop their feet and run again when fresh impulse is wanted; again swing round, and so on. A child of three or four years old, will often fly several times round the circle without touching the ground. There is not a muscle in the body which is not thus exercised; and to render the exercise equal to both halves of the body, it is important that, after several rounds in one direction, the party should stop, change the hands, and go round in the opposite direction. To prevent fatigue, and to equalize the exercise among the pupils, the rule should be, that each six pupils should have thirty or forty rounds, and resign the ropes to six more, who have counted the rotations.

Toys being discarded as of no use, or real pleasure, the only plaything of the playground consists of bricks for building, made of wood, four inches by two and one and a-half. Some hundreds of these, very equally made, should be kept in a large box in a corner of the ground, as the quieter children delight to build houses and castles with them; the condition, however, always to be, that they shall correctly and conscientiously replace in the box the full complement or tale of bricks they take out; in which rule, too, there is more than one lesson.

In a corner of the playground, concealed by shrubbery, are two water closets for the children, with six or eight seats in each; that for the boys is separate from, and entered by, a different passage from that for the girls. Supply the closets well with water, which, from a cistern at the upper end, shall · run along with a slope under all the seats, into a sewer, or a pit in the ground. See that the closets are in no way misused, or abused. The eye of the teacher and mistress should often be here, for the sake both of cleanliness and delicacy. Mr. Wilderspin recommends the closets being built adjoining the small class-room, with small apertures for the teacher's eye in the class-room wall, covered with a spring lid, and commanding the range of the place. There is nothing in which children, especially in the humbler ranks, require more training.

plan embraces a

dwelling for the

teacher's family, and two school-rooms, one for the boys and the other for the girls, each school having a gallery, class-room, and playground. The schoolroom is about 60 feet long by 38 wide, and the class-rooms each 13 ft. by 10. D. Desks and Seats. G. Gallery, capable of accommodating 100 children.

The chief requisites in an infant-school play-ground are the following. A Climbing Stand; a Horizontal Bar; Parallel Bars; Wooden Swings; a Double Inclined Plane.

The Climbing Stand consists essentially of a frame-work of poles, which support ropes for climbing. One of the most simple and economical is made of two ordinary scaffold poles, planed smooth and painted, which support a transverse beam having hooks, to which the ropes are attached.

The dimensions may be as follows: Length of perpendicular poles, 15 feet, of which 4 feet are sunk in the ground; circumference of poles at the surface of the ground, 14 inches; length of transverse beam at top, 9 feet. To this beam are attached, by screwing in, two iron hooks, which support the ropes; these are 1 inches in diameter, to afford a firm grasp to the hand. In order

that the ropes may not wear through where attached to the hooks, they are spliced round an iron ring, which is grooved on the outer surface to give a firmer hold to the rope. Both the ropes should be attached to the bottom of the poles so as to hang loosely: if not fastened at the bottom, the children use them as swings while clinging to them, and are apt to injure themselves by falling, or others by coming violently in contact with them.

No apparatus is more advantageous: it is economical in its erection, and not liable to get out of order; it affords exercise to a number of children at the same time, a succession being constantly engaged in climbing and descending the ropes and poles; the muscular exertion is not violent, but decidedly beneficial, expanding the chest, and giving power and freedom of motion to the arms. This exercise is also quite free from danger, the children never advancing higher up the ropes than they feel themselves secure. During the seven years the Home and Colonial Infant-school has been established, 200 children have been the average attendance, but no accidents have occurred from the use of the climbing-stand.

The Horizontal Bar consists of a wooden bar formed of beech, red deal, or some other tough wood not apt to splinter or warp, about three inches in diameter, and usually six feet long, turned or planed round and smooth, in order that the hands may not be blistered by the friction.

Every play-ground should possess two or three of these useful additions; one 6 feet from the ground, another 5 feet, and a third 4 feet high,-each one being supported and fixed firmly by a post at both ends. Or they may be arranged so that four posts will support the three bars. The exercises performed on the horizontal bars consist in the child remaining suspended by the arms and hands; in drawing the body up so as to look over the bar several times in succession; in traversing from one end of the bar to the other (suspended by the hands,) both backwards and forwards; in swinging the body whilst suspended from the bar.