comprehend not only the existence, boundaries, capitals, and strength of nations, but the reasons why these have come to be what they are.  As tending in the same true direction, we should not fail to mention also the faithfully-executed series of raised or embossed maps of the late Mr. Schroeter, presenting not only the profile but the comparative elevations of the land-surfaces or continents and islands, and, in detail, of the several political divisions of the globe, thus at once making the ocular study of geography real, and not as formerly, leaving the right conception of the land-surfaces to the pupil’s unaided imagination.

Among the decisive and important steps marking the revival of educational interest among us, is that looking to the introduction into our primary schools of the simple lessons for what is called the ‘education of the senses,’ and what is in fact the solicitation of the perceptive faculties, and the storing of them, with their proper ideas, through the avenues of sense.  When employed about observing or finding and naming the parts or qualities and uses of objects, as glass, leather, milk, wood, a tree, the human body, etc., this sort of teaching takes the name of ‘Object Lessons;’ when it rises to philosophizing in the more obvious and easy stages about natural phenomena, as rain, snow, etc., or about parts of the system of nature, as oceans, mountains, stars, etc., it is sometimes termed ‘Lessons in Common Things.’  In the year 1860, Mr. E.A.  Sheldon, the enterprising superintendent of the schools of that city, first introduced with some degree of completeness and system, this sort of teaching into the primary schools of Oswego.  In March, 1861, under the leadership also, as we infer, of their superintendent, Mr. William H. Wells, the Educational Board of the city of Chicago adopted a still more minutely systematized and more extensive course of instruction of this sort, arranged in ten successive grades, and intended to advance from the simple study of objects, forms, colors, etc., gradually to the prosecution of the regular and higher studies.  The greater naturalness, life-likeness, and interest of this kind of mental occupation for young learners, over the old plan of restricting them mainly to the bare alphabet, with barren spelling, reading, definitions, and so on, is at once obvious in principle and confirmed by the facts; and for the younger classes—­a stage of the utmost delicacy and importance to the future habits of the learner—­the fruits must appear in increased readiness of thought and fullness of ideas, and in a preparation for more true and enlarged subsequent comprehension of the proper branches of study; provided, we must add, that these also, when reached, be taught by a method best suited to their subject-matter and to the higher range of mental activity required to deal with it.  Whether, now, the object-lesson system and plan is the one competent to carry on the learner through those later studies, is another and larger question, and one to which we shall presently recur.