"Having gone, in the different departments of science, so far as to enable the child to read his tables with ease and security, according to the signs of the scientific nomenclature, I take it for granted that the child will be enabled to help himself on, by making of the existing means of information such use as he may deem fit or necessary, according to his circumstances, or the peculiar tendency of his mind. Farther than this I never intended to go; I never pretended to teach any art or science; in fact, there is not one with which I myself am acquainted; my only object is to facilitate generally the acquisition of the elements of all the arts and sciences, and to give to the neglected and abandoned classes of my countrymen open access to the stores of human civilization."

"Sapienti sat," will our sapients here exclaim; "it is quite evident that Pestalozzi himself is very innocent of all that humbug of elementarism, with which we are continually being pestered, to the great detriment of our uninterrupted progress in that intellectual cycle which we have prescribed to ourselves, and to the rising generation, for everlasting perambulation." No doubt they have a right to say so, after such a specimen of what Pestalozzi and his disciples might have accomplished, if they had chosen to throw themselves into that line. Still, though it cannot be denied, that "the force of example" is on their side of the argument, they ought not too hastily to conclude upon the identity of Pestalozzi's views with their own. There remains yet unremoved between the two "a great gulf," inasmuch as the devise, which has so just a title to their admiration, did not, in our author's mind, proceed from that "mania of popular education," whose ambition it is to see all the world bespattered, rather than

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"covered," with knowledge, but from an anxious, though, in the present instance, unsuccessful search for "the elements" of knowledge. His mistake, therefore, so far from invalidating, rather confirms, what we have in this volume and elsewhere said in opposition to the "machinery" of our modern systems; for it arose entirely from the circumstance, that Pestalozzi deduced the instruction of geography from the element of "sound;" and we appeal to the candour of the "popular education" men, whether the worst we have ever said of them is not, that all their instruction reduces itself to a mere matter of "sound." Let it not be supposed, however, that Pestalozzi adhered with pertinacious complacency to the plan in question; on the contrary, we have his own word that it was, with other experiments of the same kind," soon laid aside," and the adumbration which we have given in the sixth chapter, of the manner in which "the elements" of geography were impressed upon the mind of his pupils in his institution at Yverdon, shows that at a later period, when his views were more fully developed, his instruction was calculated for any thing rather than the facility of reading and remembering catalogues of dead names and ciphers. On the strength of Pestalozzi's own acknowledgment, therefore, and of his subsequent practice, we may confidently claim the authority of his name for the plan which we would propose, as the most conformable to his principles, for the instruction of geography.

As on other subjects, so on this, we would recommend the teacher to elicit and encourage as much as possible the pupil's own activity, and to watch his opportunities of so doing with the greater care, as this science consists altogether of positive facts, which it is not possible to elicit from the child's mind, but which must, necessarily, in the first instance be stated to him. Instead, therefore, of presenting to his view a map or globe, he ought to be directed in drawing himself the outlines of the different mountains, coasts, streams, &c. according to the data with which the teacher supplies him; and called upon, as the course proceeds, to connect in his mind the dif

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ferent heads of information. For the purpose of universal geography, we have found the newly invented slate globes very useful, by means of which a whole class can be employed together in drawing their own globes, any mistake that may occur, being easily corrected with the sponge.

At the outset, the teacher ought to make his pupils acquainted with so much of what is termed mathematical geography, as will be sufficient to make them understand the change of day and night, and the different seasons. Having marked any one of the meridians on the slate globe as the first, and accordingly determined the latitude and longitude of the locality where the teacher and pupils are at the time, the teacher should ask where the sun is seen at noon; indeed, he should contrive to give this first lesson at or about noon. He should next ask for the place where the sun appears to rise and to set; and having stated that the sun does not, in reality, move from its rising point to its setting point, he should leave the pupils to find out in what way the earth must spin round in order to make the sun appear and disappear in the manner described. The pupils will soon find this, and the teacher may then proceed to ask, how long it is from one noon to the other. The pupils having thus ascertained that the diurnal motion of the earth is performed in twentyfour hours, they will have no difficulty in placing the globe in the position in which the earth is towards the sun at every hour of the day. After the pupils have attained sufficient clearness in determining the comparative times of day round the globe, the teacher should by way of practice ask a number of questions, such as the following:

*

Where is it three o'clock in the afternoon, when it is noon with us?

Where is it two o'clock in the morning, when it is six o'clock in the evening here?

The difference arising from the earth's progress in its orbit cannot be taken into consideration at this time.

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Where is it ten o'clock in the morning, when it is midnight here?

And so on, until the pupils mark those meridians with perfect ease. They may next be made acquainted with the division of the circle into 360 degrees, and the counting of the distances between the meridians to the 180th degree east and west. The teacher ought then to ask the same kind of questions again, with this difference, that he should require the degrees of longitude to be specified, which will give him an opportunity, very soon, of dropping the locality of their dwelling place, and to ask the pupils for the comparative time of day of any two meridians; for instance:

If it is three in the morning under the sixth degree w. L. what time is it under the sixty-ninth degree E. L.?

If it is half-past five in the evening under the twenty-fifth degree E. L. under what meridian is it seven in the morning?

If it is noonday seventy-five degrees to the west of this meridian, (any given meridian on the globe,) what time is it seventy-five degrees to the east of it?

How many degrees are required to make a difference of six hours forty-eight minutes in the time of day?

If the sun rises on a certain point under the fifty-sixth degree E. L. at fifty-six minutes after four in the morning, under what meridian will it be noonday at the moment of sunset on the given point under the fifty-sixth degree E. L.?

Such questions should be repeated until the pupils have attained sufficient practice to solve them rapidly by mental calculation; the teacher, however, should take care not to suggest any mode of solving them, but should leave the pupils with the aid of their globes, as long as they themselves find them requisite, to work their own way, reserving his interference or assistance for the event of any pupil's finding himself entangled in peculiar difficulties, in which case still he ought only to lead him by questions, and on no account to forestal his judgment.

The next step to be taken, is to make the pupils acquainted with the annual motion of the earth. For this purpose a

is.

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plane of pasteboard, cut out in the shape of the earth's orbit, will, in absence of a better apparatus, be quite sufficient. The teacher ought here to guard against a mistake which is very common, viz. for the sake of impressing the pupil's mind with the idea that the earth moves in an ellipse, to represent the orbit as much more differing from the circle than it really A few ellipses drawn in presence of the pupils, with gradually less distant foci, will soon convince them of the approximation to the circle, which takes place in proportion; and they will still bear the nature of the ellipse in mind, although, if drawn according to the real proportion of the two diameters on the scale on which it is practicable to represent the orbit, the difference between it and the circle will not be perceptible on the periphery. The orbit, in one focus of which the sun is to be marked, should then be fixed in an horizontal position, and a small ball representing the earth fixed on a wire, in lieu of axis, under an angle of twenty-three degrees thirty minutes to the plane, made to move round it, beginning from one of the solstitial points. By means of this simple apparatus, which every teacher can prepare for himself, and which only requires a caution as to the disproportionate size of the earth, the annual motion of the earth, and its effect in the change of angle under which the rays of the sun fall upon different latitudes, may be illustrated with sufficient clearness for the pupil to perform the different calculations which arise out of this part of the subject, availing himself occasionally again of his slate globe in cases where he may find it serviceable. These calculations should succeed each other in the following order:

1. The average velocity of the earth in each astronomical month being given, to determine the length of such month, as the time employed by the earth in moving through thirty degrees of its orbit.

2. The exact time of one of the solstices or equinoxes being given in the current year, to calculate the termination of the twelve astronomical months in any given year, according to the computation of calendar months and days.