processes which it goes through.  Indeed, there is no end to the varied information which children may thus receive from simple natural objects.  At first they will have no idea of this mode of exercising the thinking powers.  But the teacher must encourage them in it, and they will very speedily get fond of it, and be able to give an answer immediately.  It is very pleasing to witness this.  I have been much delighted at the questions put, and still more so at the answers given.  Assemble all the very small children together as soon as you can:  the first day or two they will want to sit with their brothers or sisters, who are a little older than themselves.  But the sooner you can separate them the better, as the elder children frequently plague the younger ones; and I have always found that the youngest ones are the happiest by themselves.

In all cases let teachers be careful to avoid the “parrot system,” and to remember that while it is necessary to infuse a certain amount of information into the child’s mind, it can only be made its own by drawing it back again and getting its own ideas upon it—­this is called development, which is a thing universally disregarded in almost every school I have seen; and it is a general complaint made by almost every modern writer on education; and many have objected to the infant system on this account, because the teachers of it were not acquainted with its end and essence.  The true infant system is a system of development; no other system can be of lasting benefit to the country in general, nor to the pupils in particular; the genuine infant system is not subject to the fundamental errors so much complained of; it has been invented for the purpose of operating upon all the faculties, and the machine must not be condemned merely because the teachers do not know how to work it; but every committee, and each individual in a committee, appear to lose sight of these principles, in order to try how much originality may be displayed, and thus utility is sacrificed to novelty; thus we may find as many infant systems as there are days in the year; and I have been made chargeable by certain writers for the errors of others; but these writers have not condescended to examine into the merits of the system for which I have been so many years an advocate.

But enough of this:  we will now suppose that the little flock are brought by thus time into something like order; we are next to consider the means of securing other objects.  Although the following rules for this purpose are given, it must not be supposed, that they are presented as a model not to be departed from.  If they can be improved so much the better, but some such will be found indispensable.

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RULES

To be observed by the Parents of Children admitted into the ——­ Infant School.

1.

Parents are to send their children clean washed, with their hair cut short and combed, and their clothes well mended, by half-past eight o’clock in the morning, to remain till twelve.