ordinary notation more likely than any other to give the pupil that kind of musical knowledge and capacity which will enable and induce him to carry the power, which he may acquire, out of the schoolroom into the family and the church, and thus lead him to continue and propagate the elevating influence under which he himself has been happily brought? If so, the ordinary notation seems to me to be preferable to the tonic sol-fa, and men of experience say that it is not much more difficult of acquisition. However this may be, it is certain that the teacher who takes up this important instrument of discipline and instruction with intelligence and cordiality, will not go far astray, if he steadily subordinate his method and his purpose to the moral and aesthetic ends which the subject is intended to subserve.1

GEOGRAPHY, AND THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT.

Chief error in teaching Geography-Practical purpose of teaching Geography -Theoretical purpose-The two harmonize-Indirect uses of GeographyMethod of teaching Geography.

When Geography is taught in an elementary school, the most common error is attempting too much. Every inspector of schools must have endured, with such patience as he was endowed with, the exhibition of a detailed knowledge of Russia, Germany, and Thibet, side by side with utter ignorance of the course which

On this subject, and indeed on every other connected with schoolkeeping, I would refer the teacher to Currie's Common School Education, a work which every teacher ought to have in his library.

a vessel would take on its way from London to Sydney, or of the character and products of our native country. This arises from no want of energy and assiduity in teacher and pupil, for it is often the superabundant supply of these qualities which runs into such grotesque forms. The reply to a mild suggestion that the children might be more profitably employed, generally is, that they have already "gone over" Great Britain and Europe, to which the rejoinder that they require to retrace the ground from which their footsteps have been so quickly obliterated, remains unanswered.

In this, as in other subjects, the error arises from the neglect to define the purpose, the limits, and the method of the subject to be taught.

The purpose of teaching Geography in the primary school is to give the pupil a general knowledge of the configuration of the earth, the leading nations which occupy it, their chief industrial products as these are determined by climate and physical conformation, and the relation in which Britain stands to the rest of the world in the matter of exports and imports. Our own country should be at once the starting-point and terminus of the whole geographical journey. A much fuller knowledge of Great Britain and her Colonies should consequently be given than of other regions; but to build on this special knowledge, and without the broad basis furnished by general geography, would be to exclude the pupil from the elements of comparison, to confirm him in his national prejudice,

isolation, and stolidity, and to deprive geography of its peculiar educative power.

Theoretically viewed, the educative function of geography is the antithesis of arithmetic and grammarbeing extensive, while the functions of the latter are intensive. It gives intellectual breadth, adds to the stock of facts in their relation to causes, expands the moral sympathies, and tends to moderate rash judgments. Accordingly, the effect of Geography, thus theoretically estimated, is both moral and intellectual, and contributes as directly, as mere information can, to the ultimate end of the schoolmaster's labours-the formation of character. It has also this peculiarity: it is the easiest of all exercises in the perception of the connexion of cause and effect; for both causes and effects are, in the region of geography, visible and palpable. Its lessons, moreover, are capable of daily application by the child to the phenomena by which he is surrounded, and are in this way fruitful of discipline outside the school. To substitute for this admirable exercise the names of the places in each country where men most congregate, and of the large mountains and streams, is to convert a subject of instruction which is a living organism into an exanimate corpse. No process could be more ingeniously devised for eliminating the rubbish from an important study, and presenting that rubbish to the pupil in the abused name of the subject of which it is the mere accident. This is not "practical" teaching as opposed to "theoretical;" for by no method of teaching the science could it be more effectively exhausted of all

practical elements. The real significance of geographical knowledge, in the case of the peasant and the operative, is its tendency to give breadth, to store the mind with those larger facts regarding the earth and man which, when learned, lie quietly in the mind, germinate there, and contribute to that unconscious growth to which every man owes more than to the conscious steps of his onward progress.

To attain the "practical" purpose of school geography, as I understand it, is to attain these very high results; and thus it is that in this as in other subjects of elementary instruction, the theoretic and practical purposes of education become identical.

In elementary education the sphere of the intellectual and moral vision is so crowded with objects, and every separate subject is so overcharged with meaning and variety to the opening mind, and the temptation to dissipate the attention and thereby to subvert sound intellectual discipline, is so strong as to require that the teacher exercise constant vigilance. An infinite multiplicity of forms and facts besets the fresh young brain from morning till night, and makes its natural life fragmentary and ineffective. To correct this is a portion of the teacher's task. The work of the school, accordingly (and this applies to every stage of education), is an artificial work. It rests on the method of Nature and obeys it; but it is the intrusion of the hand of man for the purpose of making a wiser and a better and a more efficient man than would otherwise grow. Till the power of a sustained act of will directed towards some definite

object is supposed to be developed, we rightly leave the child almost wholly to Nature, our training being negative rather than positive; but when the time. comes for education proper (which is Discipline) to begin, our business is to direct his powers into fixed channels, with a view to fixed ends. Hence the great importance in education of narrowing the attention of pupils to the subject immediately and directly in hand, and of checking all discursive talk, under whatever specious guise it may be introduced. In teaching Geography, however, the teacher may find an outlet for the discursive tendency which also has an important part to play in education, and a legitimate occasion for giving "general information," and for exercising the general intelligence by being deliberately discursive and conversational.

Nor are the uses of Industrial Geography exhausted by the wide range which we have already given to the educative functions of this branch. For, this is the true characteristic of a right purpose pursued by a right method, that it is fruitful in its disciplinary effects beyond our immediate capacity to perceive. And we have but to advert to the manifest support which Geography rightly taught gives to Economic Arithmetic, to an intelligent apprehension of the Reading-lessons, and to the economic moral teaching which falls to be considered in the sequel, to appreciate its educational value in the elementary school, and in promoting the intelligence of the pupil.