It is vain to suggest, at this point, that the application of Scott’s estimate is not fair, because the mental labor of our schools is different in quality from his, and therefore less exhausting.  It differs only in being more exhausting.  To the robust and affluent mind of the novelist, composition was not, of itself, exceedingly fatiguing; we know this from his own testimony; he was able, moreover, to select his own subject, keep his own hours, and arrange all his own conditions of labor.  And on the other hand, when we consider what energy and genius have for years been brought to bear upon the perfecting of our educational methods,—­how thoroughly our best schools are now graded and systematized, until each day’s lessons become a Procrustes-bed to which all must fit themselves,—­how stimulating the apparatus of prizes and applauses, how crushing the penalties of reproof and degradation,—­when we reflect, that it is the ideal of every school, that the whole faculties of every scholar should be concentrated upon every lesson and every recitation from beginning to end, and that anything short of this is considered partial failure,—­it is not exaggeration to say, that the daily tension of brain demanded of children in our best schools is altogether severer, while it lasts, than that upon which Scott based his estimate.  But Scott is not the only authority in the case; let us ask the physiologists.

So said Horace Mann, before us, in the days when the Massachusetts school system was in process of formation.  He asked the physiologists, in 1840, and in his next Report printed the answers of three of the most eminent.  The late Dr. Woodward, of Worcester, promptly said, that children under eight should never be confined more than one hour at a time, nor more than four hours a day; and that, if any child showed alarming symptoms of precocity, it should be taken from school altogether.  Dr. James Jackson, of Boston, allowed the children four hours’ schooling in winter and five in summer, but only one hour at a time, and heartily expressed his “detestation of the practice of giving young children lessons to learn at home.”  Dr. S. G. Howe, reasoning elaborately on the whole subject, said, that children under eight should not be confined more than half an hour at a time,—­“by following which rule, with long recesses, they can study four hours daily”; children between eight and fourteen should not be confined more than three-quarters of an hour at a time, having the last quarter of each hour for exercise in the playground,—­and he allowed six hours of school in winter, or seven in summer, solely on condition of this deduction of twenty-five per cent, for recesses.

Indeed, the one thing about which doctors do not disagree is the destructive effect of premature or excessive mental labor.  I can quote you medical authority for and against every maxim of dietetics beyond the very simplest; but I defy you to find one man who ever begged, borrowed, or stole the title of M.D., and yet abused those two honorary letters by asserting, under their cover, that a child could safely study as much as a man, or that a man could safely study more than six hours a day.  Most of the intelligent men in the profession would probably admit, with Scott, that even that is too large an allowance in maturity for vigorous work of the brain.