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should care for the bodily health of their children! since the must, without a sound and perfect bodily instrument, be conde inisery. Zsc

All children, even the best, have their periods of energy and of and the teacher needs to study the symptoms of such changes, greatly abusing the child's mental constitution.

To recite and recite continually, and to solve problems within fied time, places an unnatural constraint upon the freedom of the ses and movements of the mind.

It is a remarkable and beautiful thing for a boy to apply hims all the force of his being to the work required of him.

But he is also in need of rest, of solitude, where he may on qu days collect his thoughts, and feel himself relieved of any purpos ever, even of his own childish whims.

Moreover, there is both in men and children, a limit to the powe susceptibilities both to things new and old.

Periods of rest are necessary, so that body and mind may their exhausted strength.

During such periods the pupil also really learns; for unknown self he is recognizing what is before him; and such new activitie thoughts are more efficient in producing new combinations of ide all the teacher's art.

Plato's principle, that "the gods are the friends of amuse should be a motto over the door of every home; and Anaxagoras mentary provision that "on the day of his death the children play," has a deep significance.

An unlimited series of ideas, without reflection, and not restri purpose, beginning, progress or end-the characteristics which disti play from work—is as natural and necessary to a child's nature as ing.

Those are wise parents who play much with their children. The greater the mental activity, the more and more enjoyed playing.

But there should be order and proportion in all things.

The most simple, formless, and modifiable material is best for play There is great significance in children's playing.

Show me how you play, and I will show you what you will be.

S

How is it that "gymnasium" now only means a place where people sit still; where they deteriorate their bodies? The name n place for training the body. With the Greeks there were deeds; w only talking about them.

GOE

There must be more definite and complete psychological and ph gical investigations of the relation between the labor and the rec of young persons; for it is evident that a natural impulse inclines ch to play and to the development of their bodies, as their most prope tination. SCHRO

"The profit of study," says Heumius, “ depends upon the int which are devoted to recreation."

It is only in some degree of quiet that the mind can digest the in sions made upon the memory or the fancy, and can make them its ment.

Incessant cramming only deadens and tends to stupidity; and it is probably psychologically true, as Lorinser quotes from H. Horst, “That in order to learn with pleasure and success, only a little must be heard or read."

How much more influential, even for a whole life, is often a single word spoken at a fortunate moment, than whole years of teaching!

Why is it that mature minds learn in a short time, by much less reading or teaching, quite as much as one who does nothing but hear instruction and study day after day?

Therefore it seems to be real barbarism and misunderstanding of the youthful character, to believe as the directors of some gymnasia do, that all depends upon incessant stimulation, inspection and manipulation by the teachers, and upon not waiting a single minute of the hour, upon going through the whole lesson without once taking breath, upon a state of incitement, wearing, stupifying and loathsome both to teachers and pupils. Each school ought to have roofed and open play and gymnastic grounds, yards, gardens and halls, and after every lesson the pupils should be obliged to go out of the schoolroom-for our precocious and self-isolating and overwise young people are partly too lazy and partly too proud, to play and run about a quarter of an hour in the fresh air, than to return, strengthened and refreshed, to their labor.

Whatever is thus wanted in time, will be richly compensated by the greater vigor and activity of the school.

ROTTECK AND WELCKER.

State Lexicon.

Education should at first be more negative than positive in its opera

tion.

It should especially seek to remove the hindrances to free self-direction; and should aim to render the will free, so that this free self-direction may be guided towards reasonable objects.

The educator should not so much form and instill, as develop, and call out. C. F. MICHAELIS.

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else. Study is the bane of childhood, the aliment of youth, th gence of manhood, and the restoration of age.

Before that age [five] how many seeds are sown, which futu and distant ones, mature successively! How much fondness, ho generosity, what hosts of other virtues, courage, constancy, pat spring into the father's heart from the cradle of the child! A never the fear come over a man that what is most precious to hi earth is left in careless or perfidious, in unsafe or unworthy, hand WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Pericles and As

The recollection of a thoroughly happy childhood (other adv not wanting) is the very best preparation, moral and intellectu which to encounter the duties and cares of real life. A sunshin hood is an auspicious inheritance, with which, as a fund, to con trading in practical wisdom and active goodness. It is a great thi to have known, by experience, that tranquil, temperate felicity is a attainable on earth; and we should think so, if we knew how ma pursued a reckless course, because, or chiefly because, they early to think of Happiness as a chimera, and believed momentary g tions to be the only substitute placed within the reach of man. P happiness is much oftener wantonly thrown away, than really s from us; but it is the most likely to be pursued, overtaken, an banded, by those who already, and during some considerable pe their lives, have been happy. To have known nothing but misery most portentous condition under which human nature can start ISAAC TAYLOR. Home Educa

course.

What would be the condition of all our families, of all our child religious fathers and religious mothers were to teach their so daughters no religious tenets till they were eighteen? What wo come of their morals, their character, their purity of heart and life hope for time and eternity? What would become of all those the ties of sweetness, benevolence, love, and Christian feeling, that no der our young men and young maidens like comely plants grow by a streamlet's side; the graces and the grace of opening manh blossoming womanhood? What would become of all that now r the social circle lovely and beloved? What would become of itself? How could it exist? And is that to be considered a c which strikes at the soul of all this; which subverts all the exc and the charms of social life; which tends to destroy the very foun and framework of society, both in its practices and in its opinions; subverts the whole decency, the whole morality, as well as the Christianity and government of society? No, sir!

DANIEL WEBSTER.

No, sir! Girard's Will C

BY HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D.

[We are firm believers in the efficacy of play-in the ring of happy voices of boys and girls engaged in their innocent sportsin the rights of children to significant and frequent holidays—and that all needless restrictions, which limit or repress the natural outburst of youthful spirits, beyond the necessities of the child's true development, spiritual as well as physical and intellectual, should be discarded from the home, the play-place, and the school.

We have nowhere met a more acceptable embodiment of our views than in a chapter of Dr. Bushnell's Christian Nurture, entitled "Plays and Pastimes, Holidays and Sundays," a portion of which we transfer to our pages.]

"Having set the young of all the animal races a playing, and made their beginning an age of frisking life and joyous gambol, it would be singular if God had made the young of humanity an exception; or if, having put the same sportive instinct in their make, he should restrict them always to a carefully practical and sober mood. What indeed does he permit us to see, in the universal mirth-time which is given to be the beginning of every creature's life, but that he has, Himself, a certain pleasure in their exuberant life, and regards their gambols with a fatherly satisfaction? What, too, shall we judge, but that as all instincts are inserted for that to which they tend, so this instinct of play in children is itself an appointment of play?

Besides, there is a very sublime reason for the play-state of childhood which respects the moral and religious well-being of manhood, and makes it important that we should have our first chapter of life in this key. Play is the symbol and interpreter of liberty, that is, Christian liberty; and no one could ever sufficiently conceive the state of free impulse and the joy there is in it, save by means of this unconstrained, always pleasurable activity, that we call the play of children. Play wants no motive but play; and so true goodness,

as he has made hunger in the body to represent hunger in th thirst in the body to represent thirst in the soul; what is swe ter, sour in the taste to represent what is sweet, bitter, sour soul's feeling; lameness to represent the hobbling of false pri the fierce combustion of heat to represent the rage of angry p all things natural to represent all things spiritual, so he prep the very beginning of our life, in the free self-impulsion o that which is to foreshadow the glorious liberty of the sou order and attainment in good. One is the paradise of nat hind us, the other the paradise of grace before us; and the lection of one images to us, and stimulates us in, the pursuit other.

Holding this conception of the uses, and the very great tance of play, as a natural interpreter of what is highest an in the grand problem of our life itself, we are led, on sobe even religious conviction, to hold in high estimation the age of As play is the forerunner of religion, so religion is to be the of play; to love its free motion, its happy scenes, its voices o and never, by any needless austerities of control, seek to ha and shorten its pleasures. Any sort of piety or supposed piet is jealous of the plays and bounding activities of childish lif character of hardness and severity that has, so far at least, very questionable agreement with God's more genial and fa feeling. One of the first duties of a genuinely Christian par to show a generous sympathy with the plays of his children viding playthings and means of play, giving them play-times, ing suitable companions for them, and requiring them to have one of their pleasures, to keep such companions entertained in plays, instead of playing always for their own mere self-ple Sometimes, too, the parent, having a hearty interest in the pla his children, will drop out for the time the sense of his years go into the frolic of their mood with them. They will enj other play-time so much as that, and it will have the effect to the authority so far unbent, just as much stronger and more come, as it has brought itself closer to them, and given th more complete show of sympathy.

On the same principle, it has an excellent effect to make of the birthdays of children, because it shows them, little an pendent as they are, to be held in so much greater estimati the house. When they have each their own day, when that

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