6. Fill up the harmonies of the following psalm tune, and in the third stave insert the root of the inversions of the common chord.

8. The three inversions of the chord of the dominant seventh are introduced into the following chant point them out by the appropriate figuring for each invertion, inserting the figures between the derivative and fundamental bass staves, and placing in the lowest stave the root of each inversion.

[The Committee of the National Society are thankful for any communication likely to assist SchoolManagers and Teachers, or otherwise promote the work of Church Education; but they do not necessarily hold themselves responsible for the opinions of the Editor's correspondents.]

To the Editor of the National Society's Monthly Paper.

THE CHURCH TEACHER, IN HIS SCHOOL, IN HIS STUDIES AND RECREATIONS, AND IN THE PARISH.

(Continued from the August, September, October, November, and December Numbers.)

PART II. CHAP, VII.-The Teacher in his Studies.

The fountain is soon exhausted from which large supplies are continually withdrawn, and into which no new supplies are sent. Thus is it with the mind, which is ever parting with its stores. The lamp must be fed with oil, or it will go out. The web of the insect is not woven without material, the phoenix does not reproduce herself without the aid of sweet spices collected from many quarters. Let the teacher learn a lesson from Arabia's fabulous bird. The rich spices of knowledge must be brought together by much labour, brooded over, and fanned into a flame by the wings of thought. The teacher must be a student, but not an ordinary one. Small need is there that he should court hard studies. He ought not to tax his exhausted energies by long vigils in the temple of knowledge, neither should he blanch his cheek by poring over abstruse subjects. Davies of Devauden, that pattern for teachers, knew nothing of the binomial theorem. John Pound, of "the gentle craft," was most successful in guiding others without having fathomed a page of Blackstone. Both laboured in simplicity of purpose, both exerted a beneficial influence upon thousands, both gained the affectionate regard of all who knew them; and when God was pleased to call them from their labours, they went peacefully to rest, leaving behind them names of which the greatest and best may well be proud. They aimed at perfection in the subjects they daily taught, but beyond what was necessary for their schools they aimed not. How many of us do this? or how many do this in the right way?

In what studies should a teacher exercise himself? This question must have suggested itself to many who have seen a teacher take his place in front of a class of children. With eyes wide open and glistening, and distended necks, the little ones stretch forward anxiously, like a nest of young birds, for the nourishment he has to give. Now he may do a world of good, if he can only give them their religious and intellectual food in the right manner. Impressions may now be communicated which shall never die out. Here let them be conveyed as a piece of glowing imagery; there as the feeling, touching anecdote, or the pithy, simple maxim. The morsel, to be digested well, must be honeyed. The teacher must also have winged words (ETеа πтероеνтα). If he be dull and prosaic, how depressing is his effect upon the class, how fruitless are his best efforts!

But if the teacher is not to prepare himself by the scholarly pursuit of one or two subjects, whence shall he draw supplies to furnish the subtle and alimentary juices his children require? From all quarters. After his training-institution course is over, he

will do best by storing in mind the feeling tale, the pointed anecdote, the illustration furnished by nature, the pithy maxim, the gems of history, the rays caught here and there from the lamp of biography, the wise sayings of the great and good. Poetry must be read. It fills the teacher's mind with images, and gives it a warmth and colouring attractive to the child, who finds its golden thread running through the tissue of his lessons. The poetical vein in a book or tale has always a charm for a child. One would conclude this à priori. His feelings are new, warm, and unsullied. He has not yet been infected by self, by money, by the world's coldness. The teacher will derive one great advantage from poetry. It will, next to religion, counteract the peculiar influences of bis position. His feelings are apt to be soured by daily thwartings and obstacles, and by confinement in a close atmosphere, while skies without are blue, and fields are green. Poetry will tend to give play to the fancy, and softness and warmth to the feelings. Who is not better for half-an-hour spent with the gentle Cowper in his retreat at Weston, or with the venerable Wordsworth at Rydal Mount and Grassmere? Can any one resist the effects of the musical verses of Goldsmith, or esteem as nought the exuberant imagery of poor John Keats?

It

Biography should be studied by the teacher. Fuller says its end and office are— -(1) giving some glory to God, (2) preserving the memory of the dead, (3) holding forth examples to the living, (4) furnishing entertainment to the reader. Biography has many aspects. It shows what we ought to imitate, and what avoid. It exemplifies the force of affection and friendship. It teaches us the greatness of working for God's glory in secluded nooks, in the midst of sorrows and difficulties, kept sacred from the eye of friends. enables us one moment to join Henry Martyn, the missionary, in his labours; in another to visit Cowper, when a cloud was settling over his spirits. By its aid we can take our place with Arnold at Rugby, in the midst of his "boys," and watch Charles Lamb attending on his afflicted sister with patient fondness. It enables us to enter prisons with John Howard, to be with Davies of Devauden when denying himself to build schools, to hear Johnson discourse of literature and things sacred, to stand by George Herbert when catechising the young of Bemerton, or to kneel in his church at the daily offering of prayer and praise. By its lamp we can read Judge Hale's advice to his son, and Exmouth's letters to his daughters. It lets us hear Robert Nicoll, of Scotland, call the attention of his mother to his verses written on scraps of brown paper, and enables us to join in the hope that he may earn something to brighten her declining day. Lastly, it enables us to walk by the side of Hooker, whom Isaac Walton describes as an obscure harmless man; a man poor in clothes, of a mean stature, and stooping, and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul; his body worn, not with age, but study and holy mortifications." Biography warns the teacher to watch the dawning tastes of a child. It shows us Haydn stealing into the church before time, while his fellow-choristers were at play, as soon as he heard the deep diapasons of the organ; Buonaparte leading the defending party of a snow-fortress on the playground at Brienne; West robbing the cat of her natural covering to make hair-pencils; Pascal secreted in a room, chalking problems on the floor; Linnæus and Tournfort leaving their studies to search the fields for plants; Newton constructing clocks and other mechanism; Hammond, at Eton, stealing away to say his prayers; and Smeaton in petticoats climbing to the top of a barn to fix there the model of a windmill he had constructed. "The child is father to the man."

The sun-rising of genius is generally cloudy. Biography reminds us of Linnæus at college, mending his worn-out shoes with brown paper; and Heyné, picking up in the streets at night the pea-shells for his next day's dinner, and the sticks with which to cook them.

Biography helps to teach what we ought to avoid. Let Burns and Chatterton admonish us. Burns fell through intemperance; the rock on which Chatterton split was pride. Thus speaks the latter, with thrilling and mournful emphasis: "It is my pride, my native unconquerable pride, that plunges me into destruction. You must know that nineteen-twentieths of my composition is pride."

Church-history must not be forgotten by the teacher. Who would be allied to a great society without knowing its constitution, its gradual growth, and its struggles?

The English language and its derivation should be studied. One may be continually digging into its strata, and continually bringing to the surface new beauties. The first object of a well-known book is thus declared by its author: "To direct the reader's attention to the value of the science of words, their use and abuse, and to the incalculable advantage attached to the habit of using them appropriately and with a distinct knowledge of their primary, derivative, and metaphysical senses. And in furtherance of

this object, I have neglected no occasion of enforcing the maxim, that to expose a sophism and to detect the equivocal or double meaning of a word is, in the majority of cases, one and the same thing."*

Aids to Reflection, by S. T. Coleridge.

The Saxon element is that which the poor and children best understand. If the Pilgrim's Progress had not been written as an allegory, it is more than probable that its style would have commended itself to all. The teacher should encourage a Saxon style therefore. There are only three words in the Lord's Prayer which are not derived from the Saxon. Can any thing be more simple than its diction? Or take another example: "“O Lord, thou hast searched me out and known me; thou knowest my down-sitting and my up-rising; thou understandest my thoughts long before." Turn this into Johnsonian English, and its effect is diminished. Saxon is the best devotional medium for the poor-perhaps for all. It goes straight to the mind. Select a few sentences from the Prayer-Book: "Lift up your hearts," "We lift them up unto the Lord;" "Let us give thanks unto our Lord God," "It is meet and right so to do;" "It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, &c." (Communion Office.) No teacher should forget the derivation of words. This study gives him great power. A dictionary of derivation by one's side when reading is not a bad companion. Reid's is a good one.

History may often serve to give point to a lesson. Like biography, it has many aspects. It looks forwards as well as backwards, like double-faced Janus. The future may be apprehended by the past. It has a moral teaching, saying to us all," I see that all things come to an end." Empires die out one after another, like the successive disappearance of sparks from a fire of thorns. Where are Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome? The answer may predict the fate of any future empire, even though it may yet have to be founded on the banks of the Yarra Yarra.

We want for schools a book which shall give the moral lessons of history-the gems to be picked out of it, and carried about with us. History is a large dial-plate; we need help in finding its golden hands. Landmarks of History is a good book.

Books of travels (especially in the Holy Land), books of voyages, books on natural history, and books of tales, "such as the hundred tales from the German," are very useful to teachers. They help them to give point and interest to a lesson. The great point of a lesson should be point. There is pleasure in reading a book when it has point, especially if it also has transparency of diction. These two qualities in a lesson make it valuable.

A book should be skimmed at the first time of reading, and the table of contents should be often consulted. The outlines of a picture are drawn first, the minor details and tints are filled in afterwards: so it must be in reading a book. At the second reading it is well to have paper and pencil, and to make an analysis or digest of it. We digest things best in our own way of putting them before our minds. Many books have a digest down their margins-especially old books. Talking about what we have read to others helps to fasten our reading in the memory.

The book of books is the Bible. It is the mirror of the Eternal. Its gems are set in one everlasting gem; redemption, pardon, grace, peace, hope, and immortality, sparkle in its pages,-set in one brilliant, one everlasting basis-God's love. All books that help to bring out its meaning are valuable, and none more so than the sermons of the old divines : "The reading of a week (says Willmott) slipped into a parenthesis.' So full are they. Speaking of the Bible, Miller, in his Bampton Lectures, says: "The point worthy of observation is, to note how a book of the description and compass which we have represented Scripture to be, possesses this versatility of power; this eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us turn where we will." This is an exquisite remark; but an old divine, Donne, has it: "Be, therefore, no stranger to this face; see Him here, that you may know Him, and He you there; and then, as a picture looks upon him who looks upon it, God, upon whom thou keepest thine eye, will keep His eye upon thee."

The writer ventures to name a few books worthy of the teacher's attention :

More might be added; but these are some calculated to direct the taste of the teacher.

A.

THE CATECHISM.

SIR,-The explanation of the Catechism often proves a very dull lesson in our village schools. School teachers are recommended to try the following plan with the higher classes: Provide each scholar with a slate, pencil, and a Bible. Have the verse found out by every scholar. Choose some one to read it, and explain the verse, and question the scholars about it. Make them write down on their slate the main point taught by the verse, and also the reference. In some schools, it may be necessary for the teacher to write out on the black-board the words and the reference, which the children are to copy on to their slates; but with fairly intelligent scholars the board might be dispensed with perhaps.

Let each child purchase a penny memorandum-book, and during the writing-lesson they might copy the writing on their slate into the book. In a good school they perhaps might write the lesson at once in the memorandum-book. By this means the

scholars would have "a faith and duty" of their own compiling. The point of doctrine should be written shortly and plainly. Here is a sample drawn from practice: "God made man good, and to live godly (Gen. i. 26).

All mankind became sinful (Rom. iii. 23).

By sin man lost God's favour (Is. lix. 2).

By sin man is dead in soul and body (Ezek. xviii. 4; Gen. ii. 17).
Christ bore our sins (i. Pet. ii. 24).”

The children might be told beforehand to look out for verses illustrative of the next lesson in the Catechism, and be set to learn the verses marked in their book, or a longer passage. And there are various improvements which will occur to any school-teacher. I will only add, that this plan has suddenly changed some idle irreverent children into a quiet and busy class of scholars. Somehow it seems that, if you can only keep a child's hands busy, you have gone far towards obtaining a quiet scholar. They want to touch, as well as see.

STREET MUSIC.

A. S. O.

SIR,-The adaptations to popular airs, under the head of "School Songs," in your Monthly Paper, were not intended to supply any imaginary deficiency in school music. The children of our schools are not unacquainted with the sublime language of that church music of which Hooker so judiciously writes; neither do they lack melodies, from English and German collections, calculated to refine and elevate their taste; but there is also springing up another class of music, which we may call street music, so pernicious and yet so popular in its character, that, as your correspondent observes, every species of low wit has been rendered into rhyme to suit it. Ought we not to take some steps by which its evil tendencies may be lessened?

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Pop goes the Weasel," negro songs, and such "contagious and pestilent" harmony must fall upon the ears of our school children; they cannot pass to and fro along the crowded streets and alleys without hearing them, nay, our rural villages and whistling cow-boys have caught the "unhallowed jingle" from hand-organs and travelling musicians. If the bitter waters must be drunk, is there no tree which may sweeten them?

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That every group of little ones standing after school-hours in less serious mood around some itinerant performer, and listening with such evident delight to "Nelly Bly," "Lucy Long," and even to " Pop goes the Weasel," are already victims to their thoroughly debasing" influence, I should be sorry to believe-though doubtless the evil is wide spread; but is it not better, if possible, to associate these popular airs with songs of a moral and Christian character, rather than with " every species" of that "ribaldry and low wit" to which it has been Mr. Percival Prosser's misfortune to listen? Trusting that this letter may sufficiently explain my reasons for offering these "very questionable verses" to those "meagre melodies,”—I am, &c.

E. E. 11th December 1855.

SIR,-In the last number of your Paper is an article, headed "School Music,' which, no doubt, many of your readers besides myself were surprised to see. In the first place, your correspondent terms the verses lately published in the National Society's Monthly Paper "questionable." Although neither the editor nor the Committee of the National Society be responsible for the correspondence which appears in the Monthly Paper, surely no song intended for children to learn would be permitted to appear in its pages if its propriety was even suspected. The verses signed E. E. appear to be the particular objects of your correspondent's dislike. From which of them can he select a verse or even a word that is not holy and pure? The melodies, perhaps, may not be all that lovers of good music may desire; yet who can hear "Harvest Home" without feeling the tune strikingly appropriate to the words? As for the song in the November