A like view begins to show itself in the writings of some of the English educationists.  The object-teaching is recognized as being, in most instances, at least, too promiscuous and disorderly for the ends of a true discipline and development, and certainly, therefore, even for securing the largest amount of information.  It too much excludes the later, systematic study of the indispensable branches, and supplants the due exercise of the reasoning powers, by too habitual restriction of the mind’s activities to the channels of sense and perception.  Isaac Taylor, in his Home Education, admits the benefits of this teaching for the mere outset of the pupil’s course, but adds:  ’For the rest, that is to say, whatever reaches its end in the bodily perceptions, I think we can go but a very little way without so giving the mind a bent toward the lower faculties as must divert it from the exercise of the higher.’ This thought is no mere fancy.  It rests on a great law of derivation, true in mind as in the body; that inanition and comparative loss of one set of powers necessarily follows a too habitual activity of a different set.  Thus it is that, in the body, over-use of the nervous, saps the muscular energies, and excessive muscular exertion detracts from the vivacity of the mind.  Logically, then, when carried to any excess over just sufficient to secure the needed clear perceptions and the corresponding names for material objects and qualities, the object-lesson system at once becomes the special and fitting education for the ditcher, the ‘hewer of wood,’ the mere human machine in any employment or station in life, where a quick and right taking to the work at the hand is desirable, and any thing higher is commonly thought to be in the way; but it is not the complete education for the independent mind, the clear judgment and good taste, which must grow out of habits of weighing and appreciating also thousands of non-material considerations; and which are characteristics indispensable in all the more responsible positions of life, and that in reality may adorn and help even in the humblest.  In a recently published report or address on a recommendation respecting the teaching of Sciences, made by the English ‘Committee of Council on Education,’ in 1859, Mr. Buckmaster says: 

’The object-lessons given in some schools are so vague and unsystematic, that I doubt very much if they have any educational or practical value.  I have copied the following lessons from the outline of a large elementary school; Monday, twenty minutes past nine to ten, Oral Lesson—­The Tower of Babel; Tuesday, The Senses; Wednesday, Noah’s Ark; Thursday, Fire; Friday, The Collect for Sunday.  What can come of this kind of teaching, I am at a loss to understand.  Now, a connected and systematic course of lessons on any of the natural sciences, or on the specimens