"pictures out" the unseen operations of good and bad visible influences. "Picturing out " is indeed the basis of all metaphor, and of a large part of all language. When we speak of a thought, for example, as impressive, we "picture out" the operation of the thought by saying that, as a seal impresses itself on wax and leaves a mark behind, so a certain thought imprints itself on our mind, and leaves behind a copy of it which we cannot see with our eyes, but can none the less remember.

Recondite though these considerations may appear, the principle and practice of "picturing out" must be thoroughly mastered by every teacher before he can consider himself qualified to explain even the simplest difficulties of language to the young. Without this key all explanations are sure to be unsystematic, vague, and pointless, and are likely to be either unintelligible or inadequate. With it, any metaphor can be explained, provided the child is familiar, or can be made familiar with the visible facts on which the metaphor is based.

26. WRITING.

Before learning to write many children may with advantage be allowed to print. Any slight disadvantage arising from the danger of falling into a style incompatible with flowing handwriting, may be obviated by careful attention subsequently, when the child begins to learn the latter; and the stimulus may be useful, not only because it shows the child at once the use of his new acquirement, but also because it teaches him to spell.

In order to teach the child to write well, he should not be allowed to write "small hand" till he has gone through a sufficient course of "large hand "-sufficient to teach him the proper shaping of the letters. In "large hand" defects are much more easily detected than in small. Children naturally prefer the latter as being easier and "more advanced"; but if they are to write well their wish must not be gratified till a good style of "large hand" has been formed.

"Copies," in which the letters are printed in red or brown ink, over which the pupil has to write, are to be used for a longer or shorter time, according to the pupil's progress. The assistance is to be lessened gradually; but care must be taken that the pupil does not dispense with assistance too soon. The teacher may sometimes advantageously supplement the printed copies by tracing the letters himself to be covered by the pupil.

errors.

It is most important in writing that the child should not repeat When looking at a boy's copy-book, you will frequently find a mistake scarcely perceptible in the first line, slight in the second line, more marked in the third, and grossly wrong in the fourth and following lines. To obviate this, the teacher should be on the watch to mark with a red pencil any error; and the pupil should not be allowed to write more than one new line until the teacher is satisfied that the error is not repeated.

It is not now thought necessary to inculcate minute directions for holding the pen; but stooping, putting the tongue out and the head on one side, and other constrained and unnatural attitudes should be noted and forbidden at once.

If the teacher requires written exercises in grammar, dictation, etc., at a time when the pupils are in the early stage of writing, he must give up the hope of their acquiring a rapid, legible, flowing hand of the best kind. It is, therefore, sometimes a question whether the handwriting must be to some extent sacrificed to the general progress of the pupil, or the progress to the handwriting; and circumstances must determine how that question must be answered. But, in any case, neatness may be ensured.

In all writing lessons, the light should enter from the left, so that the shadow of the writer's hand may not darken the paper on which he is writing.

27. DRILLING, SINGING, DRAWING.

It does not fall within the province of this work to do more than mention these subjects. For the methods of teaching them the reader is referred to the works of specialists. But they are mentioned here because, when we are beginning to train the mind and understanding systematically, it seems well to take in hand also the systematic training of the body and the senses, so that the whole nature may be systematically developed.

Drilling, more especially, is useful as a counterpoise to the sedentary studies of reading and writing. But drilling cannot be taught at home except under great disadvantages, as the simultaneous movements of large numbers contribute greatly to the spirit, liveliness, and efficiency of drill. In a town it is better to combine the children of two or three families for drill, or to send a child to a drilling class.

In cases where a child is becoming precociously fond of books and given to sedentary pursuits, it is well-especially where there are no brothers and sisters-to send him to a Kindergarten for the sake of the drill, singing, and sense-training, and to forbid all home work.

28. SPELLING.

The child who has learned to read in the right way, that is by syllables, will be generally found utterly unable to spell when he is for the first time asked to write down the simplest word. He will at first confuse pin and nip, ten and net, nap and pan. On a moment's reflection the reason is obvious. He has from the beginning learned syllables, not separate letters; and even though he may have picked up the names of the letters, still he has never needed to arrange the letters of a syllable in their proper order.

This inability may at first disappoint a young teacher, but there is no cause for disappointment. The pupil will rapidly learn the art of spelling as soon as he learns the art of writing; and until he learns how to write he has no need to learn how to spell.

Some teachers lay great stress on the oral teaching of spelling, but the anomalies of our English pronunciation make it a preferable course to trust for spelling rather to the eye than to the ear. The best means for teaching spelling are (1) not to let the pupil write much at first from dictation; (2) to encourage the child to read for himself (for it is familiarity with the sight of words that is the main help here); (3) to make him copy passages from manuscript or print; (4) to enlarge his spelling vocabulary from time to time by writing down on the black-board a new word, and by bidding him write three or four sentences immediately of his own composition, introducing this word; (5) whenever the teacher is intending to dictate a passage, he snould first write down on the board any words that may be reasonably expected to be unfamiliar to the pupil, rubbing them out before the dictation commences.

The object of all these rules is the same, it is to prevent the child from ever spelling a word wrongly. Once let a child spell "beleeve," and you will have thrice as much trouble in teaching him how to spell "believe" as you would have had if you had never let him spell it at all till he could spell it correctly. A child is, if possible, never to have had two impressions of the spelling of a word, because two impressions will result in one blurred impression. He is never to think about spelling. If he needs to pause at all, he must write the word down, and see how it looks.

A little oral teaching may be useful at first while the child is learning for the first time to distinguish letters from syllables; p, i, n, pronounced aloud, will be more readily distinguished from n, i, p. And it may be useful to make him spell aloud (1) a certain number of the more anomalous words, in order to show him the similarity of the sounds represented by the same letters, fought, sought, bought; (2) a certain number of words of the same sound with different meanings, due, dew, sea, see, each of which should be immediately introduced into a sentence composed and written by the pupil.

Rules in spelling are of very little use. The only one of much value to beginners is that, where the sound "eeve" is preceded by c it is spelt ceive; but this still leaves the beginner open to mis-spell leave, believe, sleeve.

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"For older pupils," says Preceptor, "who know something of the history of English, it is sometimes useful to be reminded that the anomalies of (1) exceed, proceed, succeed, (2) precede, recede, concede, are to be explained by the fact that the former words entered our language through the French (the French é being altered into ee, as in 'agreeable') whereas the latter, coming to us directly from the Latin, retained the Latin spelling." But such a rule would be only useful for those who have a considerable acquaintance with the English language and literature; and in English spelling the only really useful rule is that "there are no rules."

Correct reading is, of course, almost necessary as a preparation for correct punctuation; for punctuation implies pauses, and if a child makes no pauses in reading, he is only consistent in making no punctuation in writing. As soon, therefore, as a child begins to read, he should be taught the use of stops; and the best stop to begin with is the note of interrogation, because it necessitates a marked difference in the modulation of the voice.

The pupil should then be shown, by instances, how much the meaning may be altered by the omission of stops and capital letters. Abundant examples may easily be constructed, one or two of which will suffice.

(1) "At what time will you come to-morrow?" is entirely different in meaning from "At what time will you come? To-morrow?"

(2) The use of the full stop and comma may be illustrated by the difference between "We dined at six o'clock. Half-an-hour before, most of our guests had arrived," and "We dined at six o'clock, halfan-hour before most of our guests had arrived.”

Occasionally the teacher may give his pupils unpunctuated and ambiguous sentences of this kind, which they are to punctuate in more than one way, if possible, so as to produce different meanings. But these exercises should be sparingly used, partly lest they should bewilder a child who may not be able to make satisfactory sense out of the unpunctuated passage, partly lest they should habituate him to the absence of punctuation. More will be gained by insisting on punctuation whenever a passage is copied from a book or manuscript, and afterwards taken down from dictation. And here let the teacher watch the child while writing, and see that he does not write the whole passage first and put in the stops afterwards. This slovenly habit is fatal to true appreciation of punctuation; but children constantly fall into it because they do not like to interrupt their writing by stopping to punctuate. But they must be taught that it is impermissible thus to write down mere words, without sense, or with the wrong sense. They are to write down sentences, not words; and sentences require punctuation.

For want of early training in this simple subject children grow up to youth, and youths to manhood without a knowledge of it; and there are many fairly educated people who use commas scantily, and inverted commas never, with what occasionally disastrous consequences may be readily imagined.

Elementary arithmetic may be taught very early, say at four or five years old.

It should be taught experimentally, first by means of the fingers, then with an abacus, chess-board, marbles, tin soldiers, counters, or other devices for representing numbers by concrete objects.

These helps, however, should not be retained too long; and it is important that, from an early stage, the child should be familiarized with more than one kind of these concrete representations. It is not well that a child should be able to tell that 5 and 3 are 8 on his abacus, but not with marbles or counters. By discovering that 5 and 3 are 8, whether on fingers, or abacus, or on chess-board, or in marbles, he is more easily prepared to see that 5 and 3 are 8 universally, and thus to dispense with concrete assistances.

Before passing beyond the first ten digits, he should learn addition and subtraction within those limits, discovering that 5 and 3, or 3 and 5, make 8; 3 from 8, 5: 5 from 8, 3, etc. He may even be introduced to the rudiments of multiplication by discovering that 4 and 4 make 8, and that this is the same thing as saying that 2 fours make 8; that 3 twos make 6, 4 twos make 8, 5 twos 10..

When the child begins to learn the numbers above ten on the abacus, he ought to be made at once to understand the Law of Recur

rence.

The numbers after ten may be described to him, at first, as “one and ten," "two and ten," "three and ten," "four and ten," etc. Afterwards those may be shortened into "one-teen," "two-teen," "three-teen," "four-teen," "five-teen," and he may be left for a few days with these names, til he is casually told by his teacher that "one-teen" is commonly called "eleven," "two-teen" "twelve," and "three-teen" "thirteen." Not the least inconvenience will have been experienced from the little piece of un-learning; and the child will have had impressed on him the law of recurrence in a manner most likely to bring it home to him.

Similarly, as regards numbers after "nine-teen," he should be told that the number following nineteen ought to be called "twice-ten"; but to distinguish it better from "two and ten," "ten" is changed into "ty,” and it is called "twice-ty," "twain-ty," or "twenty"; and in the same way "thrice-ten" is called "three-ty," or "thirty," and so of the rest. The child will probably soon forget these disused names; but some result of them will remain in the sense of law, and in the feeling that "there is a reason for things "-a very valuable acquisition for a young arithmetician.

For the purpose of illustrating the recurrence in the names of the numbers, the abacus is preferable to any other device, because it can easily be made to exhibit them in rows of tens, one row below the other. Looking at these rows, the child can see at a glance how the facts correspond to the names; and he may be taught not only to count horizontally, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., but also vertically, thus, four, four and ten, four and twenty, four and thirty, etc.; one, one and ten (or eleven), one and twenty, one and thirty, etc.