may alight and dwell, we flatter ourselves that we are at once expanding his intellect and condensing his thoughts, and subjecting his powers to a purely intellectual discipline. But in relation to the actual purposes of life, grammar is a practical and a useful science; and he proves the best grammarian who has carefully observed the greatest number of facts, whether in single words or in phrases. Hence the well known circumstance, that many of the most eminent writers in the English language never studied a page in a book of English grammar; and that not a few knew nothing of what is called the grammar of any language.

This illustration has been used-perhaps at the expense of having been found tedious. It suits, however, as well as any that could be found, the object of expressing the difference between the infant school method, and that which is too prevalent in other schools. In the infant schools, the pupils are made familiar with facts, with objects in nature and art; and they are not required to classify these, till they have become acquainted with their points of resemblance and of difference. The grammatical study of words is but sparingly prescribed, and is never separated from a natural reference to the objects or relations which words represent. The mind is not deadened by receiving knowledge in unmanageable masses, or dissipated by acquiring it through the medium of general terms, or enfeebled by unnatural attempts to imbibe it through the sole channel of memory, or rendered superficial by never applying what is acquired. Every thing submitted to the mind is brought, as far as practicable, within the cognizance of the senses: is offered, if possible, to the imagination and the heart, as well as to the understanding and the memory. As under the genial guidance of nature itself, the whole being, physical as well as mental, is called into action: the body ministers to the mind and the mind to the body. Knowledge is thus made to flow into the opening mind through the appointed avenue of the senses; and no overstraining ambition is permitted to distort the mental habits, by attempting to work upon the intellect directly and exclusively.

A beautiful feature in the infant school system of instruction consists in its bringing forward all the faculties in proportion. On the common plan of education the whole nature lies dormant, and neglected,-with the sole exception of the faculty of memory, and sometimes, incidentally, the understanding. Spelling, reading, arithmetic, grammar, may all be named as examples of this sort of tuition, when they are taught in the common me

chanical way. As these branches form nearly the whole routine usually pursued at schools, the young labour, for the most part, under all the disadvantages of a defective and unnatural cultivation; and the mind, unless thrown into very peculiar circumstances in the period subsequent to school days, retains more or less the feebleness and helplessness which such a discipline naturally entails. In some cases, the disproportioned exercise of the memory gives it a morbid excess over the other powers; and in others, nature seems to resent the violence done to it; and the memory, so often and so long strained by application, at last ceases to act with any degree of useful efficiency.

The affections, meanwhile, have become morbid from disuse; and the creative fire of imagination has become dim. Taste, sentiment, character, force of purpose, energy of action, are sacrificed in a blind idolatry to memory: tameness, feebleness, and indolence are entailed on the individual, as his habitual attributes. Add to all this the neglect of the corporeal frame, and perhaps the fatal decline of health; and the picture of prevalent education is complete. Is this description a fiction? Who is there among the most favoured offspring of the system of education hitherto pursued, that can be pronounced free from the evils that have been mentioned? Is there a reflecting man of our day who can say that his education, however ample, how ever splendid, has not proved entirely disproportioned?

Now, the method exemplified so beautifully in the infant schools, addresses itself first and chiefly to the physical frame and the senses. Its leading object is the securing of hearth; its next great purpose, is the cultivation of the heart; and the exercise of the intellect is comparatively incidental. But this arrangement, so far from injuring the mind by neglect, only serves to inspire it with a healthy and natural vigour, which carries it onward in the career of improvement, with a velocity and a force never attained by the common methods of instruction and discipline. The human being is advanced as a living whole, and not in dissected and irregular portions.

The method of the infant schools is further recommended by the natural and gradual progress by which it leads the mind onward. The child's attention is turned first to surrounding objects, and not to books and lessons: nature, in its exhaustless variety and beauty, is laid open to his mind. Nothing is forced upon him; and his advance is never hurried. By a gentle and silent guidance, adapted to the tenderness of his age, he is conducted from the observation of things to that of their relations,

thence to the tracing of thoughts, and thence to the study of language. All his movements are those of intelligence and gratification. How different and how unnatural the course úsually pursued is, it is scarely necessary to say; violence, to a greater or less extent, being done to the mind, from the very commencement of its discipline, which consists in attempting to discriminate the confused and complicated characters used in the expression of thought.

The infant school methods are characterized by the cheerfulness of their aspect: they abound in amusement and recreation. Intellectual action thus becomes a spontaneous and pleasurable excitement; as it would always be if rightly managed. The incessant alternation of activity and rest, gives no quarter to dullness and absence of mind. The glow of healthful feeling gives a force and buoyancy to the thoughts as well as to the bodily movements; and this is no mean step towards habitual mental energy and moral courage.

On the prevailing plan of education, no definite time is assigned to mental recreation it is left to be stolen, perhaps, from the hours of sober duty. The propensity to the indulgence of playfulness which seems implanted as a safeguard in every constitution, is quelled by the frown of authority, till the spiritless and exhausted mind yields itself to morbid lethargy and that quiescent inanition, which so often secure, at a cheap rate, the credit of gravity and wisdom. The necessity of corporeal recreation is freely admitted by every body; but the advantage of mental relaxation is seldom adverted to. The professional man understands that if he would preserve his health he must ride or walk; that he must refresh his eyes with the sunlight, and recruit his lungs with the invigorating air, and allow his limbs the privilege of motion. But propose to the same man the equally urgent necessity that his mind should be permitted to reinvigorate itself at the fountains of nature, or recreate itself among the beauties of art, or enjoy the delight of mingling in pleasurable sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of others, or rise for a time on the wing of poetry, or float on the stream of fiction, or watch the gleaming of wit and the play of humour-Speak of all this as essential to the full development and enjoyment of his nature, and therefore to the power of his mind, and the perfection of his character; and you are not understood at all events you are not listened to, or. you are declared extravagant.

A close observer, however, of human nature might trace in the occasional depression or flatness of the mind, and the wandering of thought, which are so often complained of, by all men, the want of a healthful and inspiring mental regimen. In gayer communities than that of New-England, these things are better understood, and in some which are quite as grave, but perhaps more judiciously considerate of the human constitution.

In following these thoughts I have not left the subject of infant schools; for it is among their many recommendations that they multiply the innocent pleasures of childhood, and impart a cheerful tone of mind, which naturally becomes the habit of after life; that they anticipate and remove evils which too often arise from neglecting the natural propensities of the mind and the enjoyment of those intervals of healthful relaxation, which give elasticity to the spirit, and prepare it for vigorous, efficient, and useful activity.

ART. III.—Mr. Johnson's Introductory Address at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.

[In accordance with the intimation given at the close of Vol. III., arrangements have been made with a view to introduce in our subsequent numbers articles of the following description. Mr. Johnson of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, has obligingly afforded at our request, a copy of his address introductory to a course of lectures on mechanics and natural philosophy; delivered before the Franklin Institute, on the 19th of November last.

In this discourse, the author gives a brief history of the progress of science, and, in conjunction with it, an account of the popular institutions of modern times. In this part of the address, the statements relating to the mechanics' institutes of France, will be found in a great measure original, as well as peculiarly interesting.

The mental benefits resulting from a general knowledge of the sciences form the next topic of the address. The immediate subject of the lecture, as introductory to others, is then presented; and under this and the other heads of the address, many thoughts are incidentally introduced, which, we doubt not, will

prove interesting to the readers of this Journal, whether engaged in the important office of instruction, or desirous merely of finding information and enjoyment in the contemplation of useful subjects.]

Or all the departments of human knowledge, those which treat of man himself-his character, relations, duties, and destinies, are unquestionably the most important. Next in value are those which tend directly to render the productions of nature, their laws of action, and of rest, their mutual influences and their practical applications, subservient to the comfort and happiness of our race.

While the desires and efforts of man were limited to obtaining such objects of enjoyment, as could be derived from the forest, and the field, there was but little occasion for tasking his ingenuity to investigate the hidden properties of matter, or the curious laws of action, remote or intimate, which prevail throughout the universe. Accordingly, the Esquimaux and the Samoeid, the Arab and the Hottentot, the Nomadic Tartar and the American savage, make slight account of mechanical ingenuily in estimating the worth of their friends and leaders. To be destitute, therefore, of the science and skill which are necessary to the prosecution of mechanic arts, is certainly one of the characteristics of a state of barbarism. And though among some of the oriental nations a high degree of perfection, is manifested in certain manufactures, without correspondent civilization and elevation of national character, yet that perfection, it will be observed, is generally owing less to judicious applications of scientific principles, than to the severe and incessant manual toil to which an excessive population compels the labourer to submit. But in those countries the arts are mostly stationary. And it is only since the revival of learning in Europe that those sciences on which the perfection of mechanic arts depends, can be said to have made a decided progress. Even long after some of the most interesting laws of physics had become known to the learned, they were regarded rather as objects of astonishment than of utility. While philosophy taught only in the closet or the cloister, her developments, though often astonishing, led to few practical results. Scarcely. did her votaries themselves suspect that they were labouring in a field which would one day become so vast. Thus the pioneer of our forests, in clearing his little domain, gazes in mute wonder at the curious mounds of earth which here and there appear,