at that time... out of use,... the French Protestants making it an essentiall and chiefe part of the service of God; whereas the Romanists make the masse only a work of duty, and the going to a sermon but a matter of convenience.' Hugh Latimer, the martyr, 'continued all King Edward's time, preaching for the most part every Sunday two sermons, to the great shame, confusion, and damnation of a great number of our fat-bellied, unpreaching prelates.' In his 'notable sermon at Paul's church in London,' January 8, 1548, Latimer said, 'The preaching of the word of God unto the people is called meat,- Scripture calleth it meat. Not strawberries, that come but once a year, and tarry not long, but are soon gone, but it is meat. It is no dainties. The people must have meat that must be familiar and continuall, and daily given unto them to feed upon. Many make a strawberry of it, ministering but once a year; but such do not the office of good prelates"" (pp. 6, 7). The early magistrates of Massachusetts, when they encouraged the labor of the pulpit, were also encouraging the establishment of schools, the general diffusion of learning; but Governor Berkeley of the anti-Puritan State of Virginia "passionately wished his clergy would pray oftener and preach less;' for, said he, "learning has brought disobedience, heresy, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them. Thank God, here are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall have none these hundred years"" (p. 28). Still another source of the power gained by the fathers of New England was the respect which they entertained for labor, manual as well as mental. The love of hard work gives vigor to the workman, and gives him a signal advantage over other men. There was a rudimental" difference between Jamestown and Plymouth, which ended in the conflict that so lately convulsed the nation. In one was cherished the feudal sentiment of contempt for labor, and a social degradation of the workingman, ever fruitful of ignorance, indolence, barbarism, woe, and general decay; in the other, labor was honorable and honored, making the North a field of intelligent industry, virtue, temperance, and frugality, where free institutions - the school, meeting-house, and college—were the fruits and the stay of Christian civilization. In England the Pilgrims had only been used to a plaine countrie life and y innocent trade of husbandrie;' and in exile in Holland, they fell to such trades and employments as they best could, valuing peace & their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatever. At length,' says Bradford, they came to raise a competence & comfortable living, but with hard and continual labor.' Governor Carver died from overwork in the field in seed-time; and Governor Winthrop, the successor of Conant and Endicott, was "in plaine apparel assisting in any ordinary labor'" (p. 27). It is impossible that men trained under such a regime as is here intimated should not have been powerful. Their history has been too much neglected. Mr. Thornton's volume suggests various trains of thought which our clergymen ought to pursue further. He closes his volume with the appropriate verses: "We have need of these Clear beacon stars, to warn and guide our age; The great traditions of a nation's life, Her children's lustrous deeds, with honor rife, Are her most precious jewels, noblest heritage, THE TRUE Order of StudiES. By Thomas Hill. 12mo. pp. 163. The practical object of this book is to show what course of education is best suited to interest and develop the mind. For this end there is laid down at the start a table exhibiting "the hierarchy of the sciences." The table makes a five-fold division in what is held to be an ascending scale: 1, mathematics; 2, natural history; 3, history; 4, psychology; and 5, theology. Each of these branches has its more or less simple subdivisions. For instance, the principal subdivisions as you ascend the scale are as follows: geometry, arithmetic, algebra, mechanics, chemistry, biology, trades, art, language, law, mental philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, natural theology, and religion. From these special branches are built up. Thus, connected with chemistry we have electrics and inorganic and organic chemistry. Thus, too, under language we find poetry, rhetoric, and philology. Thus, further, the trades from agriculture to architecture are grouped again under political economy; and biology, in its threefold relations with physiology, botany, and zoology, appears again related to geography, and geology. Any critique of the scheme, however, regards only its more simple divisions. The question at once arises what the central thought is on which this hierarchy is arranged. Various attempts have been made to classify the sciences. Comte, for instance, placing them as more or less general in their scope, puts " mathematics first,"-to use Dr. Hill's words, -"because the laws of form and number govern all matter in the solar system; and political economy last, because its laws govern only about one million tons of matter in the form of human brains." Herbert Spencer, again arranges the sciences in three tables. The first containing what he calls "abstract science," as logic and mathematics. The second series is of the "abstract-concrete," or "the laws of force as manifested by matter"; under the head, for instance, of mechanics is magnetism. And the third series he calls "concrete science," which embraces everything between astronomy and sociology. Now Dr. Hill's arrangement seems to be based on the idea of greater or less dependence. Thus he puts mathematics first, because he holds that that science is less dependent on all the rest than they are upon it. And he sets natural history next, because he considers that though its branches are based on the mathematical sciences so as not to be able to proceed without them, yet as related to the next higher divisions of history, psychology, and theology, they all depend on natural history more than it depends on them. And he places theology last, because all below form the basis on which this rests. So, too, in the lesser divisions he names geometry first, because it would be more readily learned by itself without arithmetic or algebra than either of these last without geometry; and naturally, he claims, since the conception of forms and space precedes the conceptions of number and time. In the same way chemistry would stand before art, because the former is one of the pillars on which a full knowledge of the other depends. And thus through the list, with the more independent below and the more dependent above. Dr. Hill's hierarchy does not therefore appear at all inconsistent with Mr. Spencer's arrangement, for the two systems proceed with a different purpose. But while Dr. Hill arranges the sciences according to this idea of dependence on one another, he does not for a moment imply that a full knowledge of any one could be had without the help of all the rest, or that he would have a pupil perfected in mathematics before he let him advance to the study of natural history, or gave him suggestions of psychology and theology; but he constantly emphasizes the idea of mutual interdependence, and likens the scheme to an ever-ascending spiral, where even the undermost round traverses each one of the five great regions of thought. Before we leave the account of this theoretical part of the system we wish to call attention to the terms which Dr. Hill uses, since they have an important bearing upon our understanding of the more practical side of the plan. Each one of the names which he gives to the five main divisions has the widest possible meaning. Indeed the meanings almost run the risk of vagueness and confusion. Thus mathematics covers "the field of time and space, in which creation has wrought." History investigates "the acts of man, or the creations of the finite will," in such a broad sense as to include poetry, music, and sculpture. And psychology has logic under it, which it will be remembered by a different mode of division Mr. Spencer makes first in the series of abstract science. It is not a part of our purpose to review Dr. Hill's book, and so to discuss his order of arrangement, to inquire whether as a science geometry ought to precede arithmetic, or how far political economy or Christian evidences might depend on the study of organic chemistry. In the large sense in which we have seen that our terms must be understood, and with Dr. Hill's qualifications as regards the interdependence of our various branches, such questions might be irrelevant. But we have wished to call special attention to his use of the terms. For such is the dread of the word mathematics, for instance, with many poor souls, and such dismal associations of blackboards and chalk-dust are at once raised by it, that its use, when it seems to be placed as the bottom round of the ladder of learning, threatens immediate antagonism, even though it seems clear that what Dr. Hill really means by the word is quite innocent. But we have thought that many might be helped more by the scheme when certain expressions were translated into different language, and it were made to read, without any change of the sense, we think, somewhat as follows: Science, with reference to the natural order in which it develops itself to the mind, may be divided into five great divisions. The first regards forms and numbers and those relations of space and time of which our bodily senses remind us. This corresponds to the division of mathematics. The second considers the facts of what we call nature in its manifold manifestations. The third includes man's outward acts, past and present, and is equivalent to history. The fourth discusses the workings of man's mind. The fifth rises to the great Cause of things, or the Infinite Mind. Whatever objections one may make to this order, as thus understood, divested of the impressions which, as first read, its scientific terminology makes, it leaves one best prepared to go on to its practical bearing. On this practical side Dr. Hill's scheme is specially valuable. Indeed, we cannot see how, as he explains it, any one can fail to appreciate its excellence, and particularly as regards the training of young scholars. True, when geometry is recommended as the initial step in education one shrinks with some slight sense of apprehension at the idea of Euclid in the cradle; but when Dr. Hill tells us that he means by geometry for infants only the playing with blocks and learning to distinguish the forms of various flowers, we are ready at once to believe that going to school with such a teacher might be amusement. And when we find that geography and chemistry are to be pursued out of doors in the sunshine, and botany taken by walks in the woods, we wonder whether knowledge is such a difficult hill as we used to be told. And when we learn that the spelling-book is to be thrown away and grammars remanded to the high school, and our whole barbarous method of what, by a euphemism, we call orthography, reformed to phonotype, we fairly want to begin our school days over again. And yet it, perhaps, needs to be noticed that Dr. Hill's scheme of education is not, as we have somewhere seen suggested, and as a careless reading of the book might possibly lead one to think, at all revolutionary in its character. On the contrary, it is rather in the line of all the best and most approved attempts to better our educational methods. It goes with the kinder-garten system. It emphasizes all that has been said of late on the importance of object teaching. Nor, as will be readily seen, does it very much change the order of studies in our best public schools. It aims rather to introduce common sense and a more practical spirit into teaching. Dr. Hill plainly believes that, with proper means, scholars may be led to take pleasure in study, as well as to win knowledge out of their recreation and holidays. ones. A page from the last chapter of the book will illustrate both the method and spirit of Dr. Hill's teaching: "The youngest child brings in, for example, a dandelion. Its circular form, its radiant lines, the number of its rays, the bell shape of the involucre, the cylindrical scape and its cylindrical cavity, the close spiral into which the split end of the scape curls itself, these are mathematical points to which his attention may easily be directed. Its yellow color, slightly bitter taste, the use of its root in medicine, and in the adulteration and imitation of coffee; its relationship to asters, sunflowers, ox-eye daisies, fleabane, tansy, yarrow, ragweed, — these matters belong to the great group of natural history; in some of them the youngest child can be interested, and in all of them the older The derivation of the name, dandelion (dents de lion, dens leonis), from the form of the green leaf; and of the generic name, taraxacum, from its medical effects; the fact of its introduction from Europe; quotations from Lowell and other poets referring to it; these would be historical instructions naturally flowing from the incident of the dandelion being brought into the school-room. If now the child is asked why he likes the flower so much, whether it is because it is prettier than others, or whether because it comes so early in the Spring, or whether because it is so the poor man's flower and the children's flower - the questions will stimulate a healthy psychological curiosity, not a morbid introversion, but held still to a healthy attitude by its external hold upon the flower. And, finally, this little flower may give theological lessons of great value, if, without parade or cant, but in a simple and natural manner, you allude, as from your own fulness of heart, to the goodness of the Heavenly Father in spreading beauty with so unsparing a hand; or simply bringing to the child's remembrance, by quotation, or by a childlike paraphrase, the Saviour's appeal to our consciences, drawn from the lily of the field. Now every lesson in this school of life will lead as naturally as this dandelion has done to the five great branches of intellectual studies; and no lesson has done its full work for our minds until it has been thus linked into relation with all the main lines of dependent truth." common Of course there could be few teachers found with such tact and completeness of knowledge as to be able with interest to preach so long a sermon from so simple a text. For four hundred dollars a year we cannot hope to put instructors of Dr. Hill's calibre into our primary schools; and most of our teachers not having a gift for their work, for some generations further, no doubt, will need to have a clearly marked routine laid out for their guidance. In a word, machine work seems to be largely the order of the day, and as really in schools as everywhere else; but all the more for this very reason Dr. Hill's plan commends itself as an effort to give this routine work of ordinary teachers the greatest possible efficiency. D. |