We visited the infant school, instituted in this city by Mr. Ibbertson, an amiable and intelligent Englishman.  It was the first infant school, properly so called, which I had ever seen, and I was greatly pleased with all the arrangements, and the apparent success of them.  The children, of whom we saw about a hundred, boys and girls, were between eighteen months and six years.  The apartment was filled with all sorts of instructive and amusing objects; a set of Dutch toys, arranged as a cabinet of natural history, was excellent; a numerous collection of large wooden bricks filled one corner of the room; the walls were hung with gay papers of different patterns, each representing some pretty group of figures; large and excellent coloured engravings of birds and beasts were exhibited in succession as the theme of a little lesson; and the sweet flute of Mr. Ibbertson gave tune and time to the prettiest little concert of chirping birds that I ever listened to.

A geographical model, large enough to give clear ideas of continent, island, cape, isthmus, et cetera, all set in water, is placed before the children, and the pretty creatures point their little rosy fingers with a look of intense interest, as they are called upon to shew where each of them is to be found.  The dress, both of boys and girls, was elegantly neat, and their manner, when called upon to speak individually, was well-bred, intelligent, and totally free from the rude indifference, which is so remarkably prevalent in the manners of American children.  Mr. Ibbertson will be benefactor to the Union, if he become the means of spreading the admirable method by which he had polished the manner, and awakened the intellect of these beautiful little Republicans.  I have conversed with many American ladies on the total want of discipline and subjection which I observed universally among children of all ages, and I never found any who did not both acknowledge and deplore the truth of the remark.  In the state of Ohio they have a law (I know not if it exist elsewhere), that if a father strike his son, he shall pay a fine of ten dollars for every such offence.  I was told by a gentleman of Cincinnati, that he had seen this fine inflicted there, at the requisition of a boy of twelve years of age, whose father, he proved, had struck him for lying.  Such a law, they say, generates a spirit of freedom.  What else may it generate?

Mr. Ibbertson, who seems perfectly devoted, heart and head to the subject, told me that he was employed in organizing successive schools that should receive the pupils as they advanced in age.  If he prove himself as capable of completing education, as he appears to be of beginning it, his institution will be a very valuable one.  It would, indeed, be valuable any where; but in America, where discipline is not, where, from the shell, they are beings “that cannot rule, nor ever will be ruled,” it is invaluable.