thropic individuals in the vicinity around; and many of the little urchins who attend the school would rejoice in being instrumental in adding whatever they could procure to augment the splendour and variety of the museum.

There is one very simple instrument, not hitherto duly appreciated, which might be rendered subservient both to the amusement and the instruction of the young; and that is, the Optical Diagonal Machine, for viewing perspective engravings. This instrument, as sold by opticians, consists of a pedestal, somewhat resembling a large mahogany candlestick, having a plain mirror and a convex lens moveable at the top. The print to be viewed is placed on a table, before the instrument, in an inverted position. But this form of the instrument generally produces but a very slender effect, owing partly to the small diameter of the lens com. monly used, and partly to the circumstance, that the engraving is generally visible to the eye, at the same time the observer is viewing its magnified image through the machine. To obviate these defects, about seventeen years ago, I fitted up a machine of this kind on another and more simple plan, of which the following is a brief description. It consists of the following parts:-1. A box made of thin deal, 2 feet deep, 2 feet long, and 1 foot broad, open in front. 2. In the side opposite to the opening, and near the top, a circular hole, about 6 inches in diameter, is cut, into which a tube containing the lens is put, capable of being moved an inch or two backwards or forwards. The convex lens is 5 inches diameter, and 20 inches focal distance, and its centre is about 20 inches above the bottom of the box. 3. The reflecting mirror-which is 12 inches long and 8 inches broad, and which should be formed of the best English plate glass-the longest dimension being perpendicular to the horizon. This mirror is suspended, immediately before the lens, on two pieces of wood connected with a cross bar, which is capable of being moved backwards or forwards to its proper distance from the lens ; and the mirror itself moves on two pivots, like a common dressing-glass, so as to stand at any required angle. When the instrument is properly adjusted, the mirror should stand at half a right angle to the horizon. The top of the box opens by means of a hinge, to afford a facility for adjusting the mirror. The perspective views are placed on the bottom of the box, parallel with the horizon, and in an inverted position with respect to the eye of the observer. The engravings should be at least 17 inches long and 11 inches broad, exclusive of the margins, and coloured after nature. This instrument, thus fitted up, is greatly superior to the one commonly in use, as nothing is seen but the magnified image

of the objects, and no conception can be formed of them to dis tract the attention, till the observer actually looks through the instrument. Every person who has looked through this instrument has at once admitted its superiority to those of the common construction, and many individuals have got similar machines fitted up after this pattern. It may be fitted up at an expense not exceeding eighteen or twenty shillings; that is, nine shillings for the lens, seven shillings for the mirror, and two or three shillings for the box.

The following figures will convey some idea of this construction of the instrument. Fig. 1. represents a profile of the machine, one of the sides of the box being supposed to be removed. A is the mirror, standing at half a right angle to the lens and the

picture, with its back turned to the eye.

B is the lens, fixed either in a tube or in a hole cut out of the side of the box next the eye. CD is the bottom of the box, on which the perspectives are placed. EF is the top of the box, from which the mirror is suspended. Fig. 2. represents a view of the back of the box, or that part which is next the eye when the observer is viewing the prints, in which L represents the lens by which the prints are magnified.

There is one glaring defect in the exhibitions made with this instrument, which has never yet been attempted to be remedied; and that is, that in every landscape the right side of the view appears where the left should be, which presents a confused and unnatural view, particularly of those objects and scenes with which we are acquainted. This defect may be remedied by cutting out or etching the landscape on the copperplate-not reversed, as is always done, but in its natural position; in which case, the

engravings, when thrown off, would be reversed, like the picture formed by a common camera-obscura. Such engravings, when used for the Optical Diagonal Machine, would represent objects exactly in their natural positions; and if the true perspective of a street, a large hall, or a landscape, be accurately delineated, the scene will appear almost as natural and interesting as if we were viewing it from the point whence the picture was taken. As there are thousands of perspectives engraven expressly for this machine, I would humbly suggest to engravers and print-sellers the propriety of having such engravings etched on the plan now proposed. The fineness of the engraving is of very little consequence in such views, provided the perspective has been accurately attended to; but the colouring should be light and natural, and very different from the glaring and clumsy daubings which appear in most of the perspectives which are sold for the use of this machine.

Such are some of the objects and external accommodations which might be procured for every village school. Such a school would form a striking contrast to most of the schools which exist in our country, particularly those which are found in many of our cities and towns, pent up in narrow closes and lanes, in the midst of filth, noise and gloom, destitute of pure air, where the children are packed like hounds in a kennel, cramped in their movements, and can scarcely find a passage from one part of the school-room to another, and where no objects of delight arrest their curiosity and enliven their spirits. Instead of such scanty and wretched accommodations-which may be considered as so many juvenile prison-houses, to which the young are frequently driven by dint of force-we should thus have it in our power to introduce them into a kind of magnificent museum, where every object would excite curiosity and arrest attention. Instead of associating with scholastic exercises the ideas of tasks, stripes and imprisonment, we should thus present to their view a delightful avenue and portal to the Temple of Knowledge, which would excite a spirit of observation, rouse their intellectual energies, and produce a high degree of pleasure and enjoyment. And nothing can be of more importance to the best interests of the young, and to the cause of the universal diffusion of knowledge, than to strew the path of science with flowers of every hue, and to render all the early associations connected with it exhilarating and cheerful. The road which leads to knowledge, moral virtue, happiness, and the higher enjoyments of the life to come, ought undoubtedly to wear a bright and alluring aspect, and to be divested of every object which has the appearance of austerity or gloom.

In towns, a number of these schools might be connected together in one large square or building, surrounded with as extensive a space as can be procured, forming one grand seminary, where children of all ranks might associate without distinction in their amusements and scholastic exercises. The amusements and the exercises of such numerous groups of the young, both within and without doors, would form a lively and interesting spectacle to every philanthropist; and public schools, when properly situated, and governed on Christian principles, so far from being a nuisance to the neighbourhood, as they are generally considered, would constitute one of the best ornaments, and the most delightful scenes, connected with general society. Where large towns diverge into extensive suburbs, a variety of distinct seminaries might be erected at proper distances from each other, to accommodate the inhabitants of the adjacent district, so that the children would not require to go too great a distance from their homes.

School-Books.

There are few things of more importance in the arrangements connected with education than the judicious selection and compilation of the Books intended to be put into the hands of the young. I have already offered a few strictures on the inefficiency of the school-books which have been most generally in use in our borough and parochial schools; and although of late years several improved school-collections have been introduced, scarcely any have yet appeared completely adapted to an intellectual system of tuition. The following general principles ought to be recognised in the compilation of every class-book for the use of schools:

1. That the subjects introduced be level to the comprehension of those for whose use the book is intended.

2. That every article it contains be calculated to convey some portion of useful knowledge.

3. That the selections in general have a moral tendency, and that every thing that might foster a spirit of pride, avarice, ambition or warfare, be carefully excluded.

4. That moral and physical facts should form a prominent feature in such books, and mere fictions be entirely discarded. 5. That the lessons be so constructed, that every sentiment and description may produce an accurate and well-defined idea in the minds of the young.

These rules proceed on the assumption, that the communication of ideas the elements of thought-and the formation of moral character, are the great and ultimate objects of education.

In the first books put into the hands of children, the lessons should be so constructed that the leading ideas they contain, or the objects they describe, may be immediately pointed out, either by means of the specimens contained in the museum, by pictorial representations, or by the objects around them in the scene of nature; so that every word, or at least every description contained in the lesson, may be associated in the mind of the child with the idea of its objects. Hence the propriety, in the first instance, of restricting the descriptive lessons solely to sensible objects. It is through the medium of the senses that the elements of all our knowledge are derived. We perceive, in the first instance, a variety of objects which immediately surround us, and gradually become acquainted with some of their qualities. As we advance in life, and mingle in society, and make excursions from one place to another, the number of our perceptions is indefinitely increased. We have the power of presenting to the view of the mind the images or ideas of these objects at pleasure, even when the objects which first produced them are removed. Those ideas are nothing else than renewed representations of what we have at any time perceived or felt through the medium of the organs of sensation. Having received such impressions or ideas, the mind has the faculty of contemplating them at pleasure, whether their objects be present or absent-of combining them together, of compounding and decompounding them, and of modifying, comparing, and examining them, in an infinite variety of lights; by which means it is enabled to enlarge the objects of its perception and contemplation, and to acquire an inexhaustible treasure of other ideas, distinct from the former, though necessarily resulting from them. Such is the origin and progress of all our knowledge and thus the human mind pursues its course from simple perceptions and trains of ideas, and from one discovery and chain of reasoning to another, till it rises from the first dawnings of reason to the full blaze of intellectual light, and to the height of moral improvement.

These considerations evidently point out the mode in which instruction ought to be communicated, and the objects towards which the youthful mind should, in the first instance, be directed -for want of attention to which, many of our school-books are nearly as inefficient for the purpose intended as if they had been written in a foreign language. I have just now lying before me two initiatory books lately published, entitled, "First" and "Second Books for Children," in which there is not a single sentence conveying the idea of a sentiment or fact, nor even a single word, ́ that will produce an idea in the mind of a child---every page being