[Footnote A:  This school has since become a very important Normal school, from which many others have emanated, the head master being the one I originally instructed:  Mr. Stowe, also, one of the directors, has applied the principles of the Infant School System to the instruction of older children, which is called Stowe’s Training System; being applied to juveniles, with great success.  I know of no school, except the Dublin Normal Schools, equal to those, and of no masters superior to those I have seen who have been taught there.]

The music chosen for children should be easy and simple, fluent and varied.  Hymn tunes should be of a rather lively character, as the more dull and sombrous are not well adapted to the infant ear.  Airs for the tables or exercising songs are required to be very cheerful and inspiring, and then they tend to excite pleasure and liveliness, which should often be aimed at in an infant school.

As children take much interest in singing, and readily learn verses by heart, so as to sing them, although not properly instructed in their meaning or rightly understanding them, singing has been considered by many persons the “soul of the system.”  This is a grievous error as regards the intellectual advancement of the children, and still worse as regards their health and that of the teacher.  I have at times entered schools as a visitor when the mistress has immediately made the children show off by singing in succession a dozen pieces, as if they were a musical box.  Thus to sing without bounds is a very likely way to bring the mistress to an early grave, and injure the lungs of the dear little children.  Use as not abusing is the proper rule, tar all the new modes of teaching and amusing children that I have introduced; but it has often appeared to me that abuse it as much as possible was the rule acted upon.  Call upon the first singers of the day to sing in this manner, and where would they soon be?

CHAPTER XIX.

GRAMMAR.

Method of instruction—­Grammatical rhymes.

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“A few months ago, Mr. ——­ gave his little daughter, H——­, a child of five years old, her first lesson in English Grammar; but no alarming book of grammar was produced on the occasion, nor did the father put on an unpropitious gravity of countenance.  He explained to the smiling child the nature of a verb, a pronoun, and a substantive.”—­Edgeworth.

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It has been well observed, “that grammar is the first thing taught, and the last learnt.”  Now, though it is not my purpose to pretend that I can so far simplify grammar, as to make all its rules comprehensible to children so young as those found in infant schools, I do think that enough may be imparted to them to render the matter more comprehensible, than it is usually found to be in after years.