11. A man passes three toll-gates; at the first he 10. pays 5 cents less than half his money; at 11. the second, 2 cents less than half the remainder; at the third, one cent more than 12. half of what he then had; he then had 4 cents; how much had he at first? 12. 8 yards of silk cost 24 4-9 yards of cotton; how much cotton will cost 57 1-7 yards of

OUR BOOK TABLE.

COMMON SCHOOLS OF CINCINNATTI.-We are indebted to Andrew J. Rickoff, Esq., the gentlemanly Superintendant of the Public Schools of the "Queen City of the West," for a copy of this report for the year ending July 6, 1857. It is an able and interesting document, and embodies a large amount of valuable information. The author discusses at considerable length, and with great ability, the course of study and systems of instruction, which seem best adapted to the wants of our people. His positions are carefully taken and well sustained, and the whole report is well worth a perusal.

WARREN'S COMMON SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY. By D. M. Warren. H. Cowperthwait & Co.: Philadel

phia. This work was noticed briefly in our last. It

deserves a more extended comment. Mr. Warren has become known to our best teachers as the author of an admirable treatise on Physical Geography, noticed in this journal about a year since.

In the preparation of the present work, he has been assisted by Mr. Arthur Sumner, formerly of the Rhode Island Normal School.

The maps are remarkably good, the type being clear and distinct, and the general appearance neat and pleasing. The mechanical execution of the book is a credit to the publishers. The introductory part seems to present the general principles of the science in a very concise and interesting manner. The general order of discussion, the arrangement of topics, and particularly the descriptive text being placed before the map questions, all appear to be an advance upon the usual order of our school geographies.

But what strikes us as of more consequence than anything else, is the character of information given.

mountain-systems are mentioned as dividing the
country into three distinct sections:-the Atlan-
tic Slope, the Pacific Slope, and the Great Cen-
tral Plain. The consequences of this natural
division are deduced, and the divisions indicated
on the map. The irregular coast line of North
America is compared with the contour of South
America, and the effect upon commerce indi-
cated. The authors seem particularly fortunate
in their method of asking questions. The map-
questions are certainly of a superior order.
The travels are a pleasing and highly instruc-
tive department of geographical study.

The two commercial maps are very valuable. They are fine speclmens of the engraver's skill, and open an important department of study. A knowledge of the ocean roads is essential to commerce, and a knowledge of the currents and winds, which effect their location, is of great con

sequence, and should be carefully studied.

The map of Africa will attract attention, on account of the changes, made necessary by the recent discoveries there.

We commend the book to the favorable attentention of teachers.

WE HAVE received the Second Annual Catalogue of the "South-Western State Normal School, at Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio. This institution has been in operation but about two years, but judging from the statistics given be low, it has made rapid progress, and is doing a good work.

The method of instruction is indicated by the following:

The "pouring on," "pounding in," and "drawing out," systems will receive due consideration, and the "better way" will not only be aimed at in the methods pursued, but pupils will have oppor. tunity in the regular classes, or in the Model School, to put in practice what they may learn of the art of teaching from observation and lecWe well remember the difficulty we experienc-tures on the science. ed, years ago, with the old text books on geography. There was the regular routine of names, location of places, population of cities, length of rivers, and height of mountains, all to be committed to memory and recited, parrot-like, and then forgotten. We confess we experienced more difficulty in teaching geography than any other study.

The recent attention to Physical Geography, has opened the way for the remedy of this evil. But we have not before seen a text book which embodies the general laws of Physical Geography, and applies them to the study of what is usually called Descriptive Geography. For example, in the description of North Amrrica, the two great

STATISTICS.

Value of Building...
Value of Land, three acres......
Value of Apparatus, in use........
Value of Library of Text Books......
Vols. in Library of Reference Books..
Male Teachers employed..........
Female Teachers.......

..........

66

$10,000.00

600.00

1,200.00 2,160.00

300

3

141 90

9 17

Male Pupils enrolled in Normal Dep..
Female Pupils "
Male Pupils enrolled in Model Dep...
Female Pupils
Total number Pupils enrolled during the year 257

66

SEVERAL BOOKS lie over for notice in our next.

The R. J. Schoolmaster.

VOL. III.

OCTOBER, 1857.

For the Schoolmaster.

Roger Ascham,---The Wise Teacher.

AMONG the scholars and authors whose

NO. 8.

the bringing up of youth," the second "teaching the ready way to the Latin tongue."

It is not our purpose to present either an abstract or a criticism of this venerable, but not antiquated, treatise. Let our teachers see for themselves whether the schoolmaster

of the nineteenth century cannot learn some

thing from the schoolmaster of the sixteenth. We wish, however, to exhibit to our readers the character and some of the opinions of this early, but almost unknown, teacher.

fame gives a glory to the Elizabethan period of English Literature was Roger Ascham. He died soon after the beginning of that brilliant era; but on the page which commemorates the chivalrous deeds and the poetic spirit of Raleigh and of Sidney, which records the disappointments and the successes of "mild and serious Spenser, which tells of the lofty aspirations of Bacon, and recounts the triumphs of Shakspeare, his name and his labors deserve a place. His writings are not voluminous. They are all comprised in a thin quarto, or a small duodecimo. He claims no mention in the stirring chronicle of the military or the political historian. In troublous times he led a quiet and almost uneventful life. He passed unharmed through a period of bitter persecution, and, though a Protest-he, in a letter he wrote from Germany, "that I shall forget all tongues but the Greek, before I come home." At the rate he and the

ant, preserved by his innocent, childlike and harmless course, the esteem and even the

friendship of men who brought Lady Jane Grey to the block, and condemed Latimer and Ridley to the stake.

He lived in an age of high philological attainments, when queens read Demosthenes in the original, and high born ladies preferred the solitary study of Plato to the excitement of the chase. It was the age in which Sir Thomas More and his beloved daughter, Margaret, talked Latin with their guest Erasmus, and the mother of Bacon discussed theology and kept up a regular correspondence with Italian scholars on the continent. Greek was Ascham's favorite tongue. "I think," says

English ambassador, whom he accompanied abroad, read Greek, his expectation seems well founded. In three years, reading four days in the week, they finished Herodotus, He is entitled to the praise of having been five tragedies, three orations of Socrates and the first English writer on Didactics, and of seventeen of Demosthenes. He could not, having illustrated, in a course of enthusiastic however, have been in great danger of forgetstudy and wise instruction, the principles he ting the sister tongue of antiquity, for, as professed. The work to which we refer, bears Latin secretary to the English court, he had the honored title of "The Schoolmaster." It to indite, on the occasion of Mary's marriage consists of two parts; the first " teaching to Philip II, no less than forty-seven letters

to different personages in Europe, of whom our classes and the teacher's time allowed it, we not one was of a lower rank than a cardinal. might derive benefit from more closely followWhat a labor of love must it have been to ing his example. He proposed that the teachtransmit the tidings of this august ceremony er and the scholar should read together a pasin a language in which Tully had correspond- sage in some Latin author; the former careed with his friends, and Pliny had reported fully explaining the meaning, the design, and his doings to his imperial master! What an the grammatical peculiarities and idioms of the exquisite finish and grace must he have given passage. The scholar having prepared a transto that beautiful hand writing which had made lation of it into English, shall then re-transhim famous, both at college and at court! late it into Latin. After pursuing this course Far better must such an employment have for some time the teacher shall select some suited him than that of teaching "pot-hooks passage unknown to the scholar, translate it and hangers" to the princess Elizabeth, or himself, and give it to his pupil to re-translate. even that of playing chess with an imperious This new translation is then to be carefulpupil, whom it would have been impolitic to ly compared with the original, and rigcheck-mate. idly criticised. Finally, the teacher shall compose a speech or an essay and require his scholar to render it into Latin. It is evident that a course of discipline like this, cannot fail to make the learner familiar with the words and the idioms of a language, and must give him great skill and good taste in the use of them.

work. 66

But, in due time, Ascham rose from the post of writing master to the royal household to that of Greek tutor; and, in his instructions, he had an opportunity to put in practice the principles recorded in "The Schoolmaster," the book which, having no worldly goods, he bequeathed to his own children. His views on one important matter in Didactics may be However unwearied, as a teacher, and dililearned from one of the apothegms of that gent as a student, Ascham knew that one Love," says he, "is better than secret of a scholar's success is the mingling of fear, gentleness than beating, to bring up relaxation and exercise with severe intellectchildren, right in learning." This must have ual toil. There is real wisdom and sound phibeen the guiding maxim of his life as a teach-losophy in the following quaint language er. He experienced its truth in the unchanging regard borne him by his royal pupil, and in the proficiency which enabled him to hold up her example for the admiration and the imitation of all the "young gentlemen of England." It is to the illustration of this maxim that he devotes one of the most celebrated pages of his work-that which records the studiousness of Lady Jane Grey, and her gratitude towards a gentle and winning teach-hurt with continual study; as you see in luter. Any instructor whose gentleness arises not from timidity or an unworthy desire for popularity, but from a sincere desire to influence and impress his scholars, and who can, on needful occasions, be firm and even severe, will verify this favorite principle of Queen Elizabeth's Greek tutor.

which he puts into the mouth of an advocate of out-of-door sports: "To omit study some time in the day and some time in the year, makes as much for the increase of learning as to let the land lie fallow some time, maketh for the better increase of corn. The best wits must needs have much recreation and ceasing from their book, or else they mar themselves, when base and dumpish wits can never be

ing that a treble string must always he let down, but at such times as when a man must needs play, while the base and dull string needeth never to be moved out of his place." Where is the earnest, ambitious boy's heart that does not assent to the truth of that?Must not Ascham have been a popular as well Experience has sanctioned some of Ascham's as a successful master of both studies and methods of giving instruction in foreign sports? And must not the boys in St. John's tongues. Our modern system of writing College, Cambridge, where he taught Greek, Latin and Greek, by way of acquiring those and the royal children of Henry VIII.'s languages, does not differ much from his plan household, whom he instructed in writing and of double translation. Indeed, if the size of in the languages, have loved and honored and

himself to death by a conspicuous profession. The pupil of Cheke, and the instructor of Elizabeth, he was worthy of Sackville's antithetic commendation of him, "The scholar of the best master, and the master of the best scholar."

obeyed such a teacher? To all other sports hered to the truth without boldly exposing and exercises for the relaxation of the student Ascham preferred archery; though we are sorry that impartiality obliges us to state that in his later years he displayed a strong taste for the unscholarly amusement of cock-fighting, and even proposed to write a treatise in defence of it. We are glad that he never accomplished this, and that the " Toxophilus," in which he advocated the cause of archery, has not an "Alektoromachia" for a companion.

For the Schoolmaster.
Chaucer to Shakspeare.

G.

Did our space allow it we should like to Chaucer-Lydgate-Skelton-Paston Lettersexhibit Ascham's love for his native tongue. Fond as he was, in his manhood, of the language which preserves the "tale of Troy divine," the sublime musings of Plato, and the impassioned eloquence of Demosthenes, he labored diligently for the purity of that speech which his infant lips had lisped.

that the spelling of words in the old writings was not so carefully regarded as in those of to-day. In each of the extracts now before me, the spelling of the word parson differs. (Persone, parsone, persoun.)

More Ascham - Spencer Wiclif and James I. Bibles-language compared. In this hasty view of the English language, notice will be taken of such writers only as are most distinguished for their excellence. Some of these, who fail to give a proper coloring to the sketch, will be barely mentioned. Our readers must have perceived that AsChaucer's style may be represented by two cham's life was that of a gentle and unworld-quotations from the prologue to the Canterly scholar. The spirit which led him to dis-bury Tales. The reader will readily discover dain to improve his near relation to Elizabeth to secure favor for himself or for others ever actuated him. He was free from both ambition and avarice. His £10 or £20 per annum contented him, though his scanty pittance was not always husbanded with the care which he ought to have displayed. He mingled with courtiers without learning their tricks, and carried on the correspondence of one of the mightiest nations of Europe without concerning himself much with the destiny of princes and of kings. When admitted to an audience with Charles V. he deemed the emperor's personal appearance in his sickchamber and at his table, more worthy of mention in his letters than any imperial schemes or splendors. He showed his childlikeness by writing home that Charles resembled the vicar of Epurstone, a place whose name is hardly known, and that no man kept his face in the beaker longer than he. In this gentleness was his safety. He was favored by Protestant Edward, and spared by Romish Mary and her bloody counsellors. He had not the spirit of a reformer, though professing the principles of the Reformation, and probably thinking, as old Fuller says, that the flames of Smithfield were hotter than the pic-But riche he was of holy thought and werk. tures of Fox's Book of Martyrs, quietly ad- He was also a lerned man, a clerk,

The following lines commence the Prologue:
"Befelle, that in that season, on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury, with devout courage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Well nine and twenty in a companie
Of sundry folk, by aventure yfall
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The chambers and the stables weren wide
And well we weren eased at best.
And shortly, when the sun was gone to rest
So had I spoken with them every one,
That I was of their fellowship anon,
And made agreement early for to rise,
And take our way there as I you advise."

This extract is from Croly's "Beauties of the British Poets." Following is the description of the Parson, which I quote from Spalding's version.

"A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a pore Persoun of a toun: