shrieks loudly for five hours as the utmost limit, and four hours as far more reasonable than six.  But even the comparatively moderate “friends of education” still claim the contrary.  Mr. Bishop, the worthy Superintendent of Schools in Boston, says, (Report, 1855,) “The time daily allotted to studies may very properly be extended to seven hours a day for young persons over fifteen years of age”; and the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, in his recent volume, seems to think it a great concession to limit the period for younger pupils to six.

And we must not forget, that, frame regulations as we may, the tendency will always be to overrun them.  In the report of the Boston sub-committee to which I have referred, it was expressly admitted that the restrictions recommended “would not alone remedy the evil, or do much toward it; there would still be much, and with the ambitious too much, studying out of school.”  They ascribed the real difficulty “to the general arrangements of our schools, and to the strong pressure from various causes urging the pupils to intense application and the masters to encourage it,” and said that this “could only be met by some general changes introduced by general legislation.”  Some few of the masters had previously admitted the same thing:  “The pressure from without, the expectations of the committee, the wishes of the parents, the ambition of the pupils, and an exacting public sentiment, do tend to stimulate many to excessive application, both in and out of school.”

This admits the same fact, in a different form.  If these children have half their vitality taken out of them for life by premature and excessive brain-work, it makes no difference whether it is done in the form of direct taxation or of indirect,—­whether they are compelled to it by authority or allured into it by excitement and emulation.  If a horse breaks a blood-vessel by running too hard, it is no matter whether he was goaded by whip and spur, or ingeniously coaxed by the Hibernian method of a lock of hay tied six inches before his nose.  The method is nothing,—­it is the pace which kills.  Probably the fact is, that for every extra hour directly required by the teacher, another is indirectly extorted in addition by the general stimulus of the school.  The best scholars put on the added hour, because they are the best,—­and the inferior scholars, because they are not the best.  In either case the excess is destructive in its tendency, and the only refuge for individuals is to be found in a combination of fortunate dulness with happy indifference to shame.  But is it desirable, my friend, to construct our school-system on such a basis that safety and health shall be monopolized by the stupid and the shameless?