interests of party; and religion itself communicated, not in the true spirit of the Gospel, but in the narrow bigotry of some new fangled notion, alike derogatory to God and man."

We perfectly agree with Dr. Baermann; and would add that education, such as can be given at a good boarding school, is in our opinion superior to any other, even to that received in the house of a parent; for few parents have the time and means for training their children to habits of order and obedience, and fewer, owing to the inferiority of their attainments, the consequence of the miserable state of education in their early days, are capable of undertaking the task of intellectual instruction. The good sense, however, which fortunately often exists in minds not highly accomplished, induces parents to send their children to boarding schools, with a conviction that the discipline of study, and the authority and moral government of a schoolmaster or governess, is the most salutary; and that a well managed school is the best sphere of a child's early years.

At home a young person is exposed to the corrupt influence of servants, and perhaps is in daily contention with an elder brother. He witnesses at least all the petty, if not the more violent contentions of home; and should a family be regulated according to the most fastidious notions of fitness and propriety, yet the weakness of the parental rule will continually operate to his disadvantage, and the too frequent want of unity of opinion between father and mother, on subjects essential to his welfare, will gradually weaken his respect for those whom, by every law, Divine as well as moral, he is called upon to "love, honour, and obey.'

But in a good boarding school, the master undertakes a duty which nature has imposed on the parent, and which he can conscientiously fulfil unwarped by overweening affection or false tenderness. In private families there are but few who possess the stern justice of a Brutus: but this stern justice is as necessary as the "natural tenderness" of a mother. Fewer, indeed, would offer up their son to Heaven as did the patriarch; but there are moments when sacrifices as trying must be made to promote the religious good of the child. Fathers and mothers are not the persons to "cut off" the offending hand, nor to "pluck out" the offending eye. But the educator can probe the gangrene to the quick, lay open the muscles, and rip the dead from the living parts of the diseased subject, but still with a holy love for the offender; and, like the bold and skilful surgeon, accelerate the healing process by a judicious application of his practical experience and scientific knowledge.

A school, too, is properly a little state, for the governance of which certain laws, rules, and regulations are laid down, the infringement of which is not to be permitted with impunity. The schoolmaster is the king of it, and by authority, and by the virtue of authority, affords the first and most valuable of all

lessons, submission, as the foundation of all social order, peace, and happiness. But in a good school, this submission is not a blind one. The pupil soon sees, without any specific course of instruction on the subject, that to submit is not only a duty, but a virtue, and it soon becomes habitual, and, at last, pleasurable to him. The larger number of minds are so constituted, that they require that decision which the laws of a school or of a kingdom are calculated to afford: while to that other portion of persons who wish to "do as they like, and have their own way," the wholesome discipline of a school is not only of great importance, but is absolutely indispensable.

We look upon the end of education to be the preparation of the pupil for the exercise of his duties to society. These duties comprehend a wide range, but they may all be comprehended in a few words: obedience to the law of God and man; respect for the feelings of others; forbearance under aggression; and common charity to all. Now, in a school, more than in any other place, so much as a school is an epitome of the great and stormy world, there is ample scope and opportunity not only for basing the character on these duties, but for training it in, and through them, and of building it up step by step to the heights of both private and public virtue.

SCHOOL GOVERNMENT.

In examining the subject of school government, I am led to the conclusion, that in a large school (and my remarks are all intended to apply to such) the domestic feelings and affections which prevail in a family are not, to their full extent, admissible; that, although a teacher should endeavour to engage the personal affections of his pupils, yet parental affection, and parental partiality, ought not to be, and is not expected of a teacher; and that a school, in which the number of pupils is great, approaches more nearly, in the relations of its different members, to a nation than to a family. A school is, in fact, a little nation or community, demanding of its members the same abridgment of personal liberty, and owing to them the same protection, that constitute the spirit of national laws; and like a nation it is more dependent for its success, and the happiness and welfare of its members, upon the form and efficiency of its government, than upon its own internal resources.

Without attempting to elevate small matters to an undue consideration, I contend that a school, and especially a large one, contains all the elements of a political community. There is

the protection of right, and the punishment of wrong; there is individual enterprise to be encouraged, and the general welfare to be promoted; there is a public sentiment in schools, which a skilful ruler knows how to guide, and against which, as he values his popularity and influence, he dares not to offend; there is such a thing as school patriotism, which the judicious teacher can keep alive without improper rivalry; and there is such a thing as school treason, which the authorities of the institution should punish in the most decided and rigorous manner.

Allow me, from the many truths that are here presented to us, to offer the following, as all that the time will permit me, even briefly, to dwell upon :

1. The government of a large school should be vested in a single person.

2. It should not be despotic, but should be restricted by constitutional provisions and a code of definite laws.

3. The presiding teacher should be exempt from the personal instruction of the classes.

1. The common sense of mankind has long since decided upon committing the whole executive authority of the school to the hands of the principal teacher, constituting it what may be called, in political language, a monarchy. All the attempts to check the abuse of arbitrary power, by establishing several principals with equal powers, must necessarily fail; for several individuals can rarely agree in those prompt measures that school discipline frequently demands. The same may be said of the introduction of democratic government in schools; if indeed a government properly so called has ever been instituted. I have known teachers to amuse their pupils, and, perhaps, themselves, by allowing them to elect nominal officers; but it amounted to nothing more than amusement. All the pretended attempts at establishing a republican form of government, have been nothing but a useless imitation of democracy, by committing a temporary authority to a part or the whole of the pupils; their legislative powers not extending beyond measures of no importance, and even these being subject to the arbitrary veto of the higher authorities.

Democracy is, and ever will be, wholly inadequate to the purposes of school government, and for this very plain reason: that the students are always pre-supposed to be minors, and as such are by nature, and are declared by law, to be incapable of selfgovernment. The qualifications for self-government are enlightened judgment and fixed moral principles,-qualifications necessarily absent from the immature minds of boys. So long as "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child," I shall never expect to see school boys legislating upon the business of the state or the school. In a word, I hold it to be evident, that minors are incapable of exercising any determinate

authority; and that one of the lessons they should early learn and be slow to forget, is, that their understandings are immature, and that they are to submit to the better judgment of their elders.

2. But arbitary power needs some check; and I object to the terms, absolute monarchy, unlimited monarchy, &c., as applied to the rule of a teacher, although used and advocated by the most popular writers on the subject. I object to them, because they do not really define the kind of government existing in our best schools, even where all the school authority is nominally vested in the presiding teacher; for it must be remembered, that such authority is, at best, but a limited prerogative, being checked and balanced by various circumstances, as charter provisions, oversight of visiting committees, terms of contract, public sentiment; and farther, because the expressions, absolute, unlimited, and the like, are at variance with the acknowledged imperfections of human judgment, and limits of human power. I do not deny that an unlimited sway has sometimes been assumed. The school, in such instances, exhibits many of the features of a petty despotism; the appropriation of the time and even the property of the pupils, as I have known to be done, bearing a good analogy to the disregard of right which the Pacha of Egypt exhibits towards his subjects; and the ferule being a good representation of the cruelties of the bastinado. But in our better class of schools, these things are unheard of, aud the checks to which I have already alluded constitute what, in a practical sense at least, may be called a constitution, and the term constitutional or limited monarchy is far more applicable to school government.

Even the proprietor of a private seminary, who of all teachers is, perhaps, the most unlimited, is unwise if he does not put some check upon his own powers; for I consider the exercise of uncontrolled school authority, even in the qualified sense in which a teacher may possess it, as a most difficult, troublesome, and undesirable task. If a teacher attempts to make his single word a law, he will find it exceedingly difficult to make his decisions bear the stamp of equity. For he will not only do actual injustice in some cases by the difficulty of equitable adjudication, in cases presented in a school, but he will find himself always associated with the punishments it may become expedient to award; and though he may labour to convince his pupils of the righteousness of his decisions, yet the association remains, and the offender knows that the teacher's will, instead of statute, has condemned him. The disposition to resist the infliction of punishments is so natural, that he who wields despotic authority will find himself brought into continual collision with the personal feelings of his pupils; a circumstance most unfavourable to the cultivation of those affections, in the exer

cise of which the teacher finds his greatest influence and his greatest reward.

Farther, despotic authority in a school is not only resisted by its immediate subjects, but is always unpopular with the public, on account of the sympathy which parents naturally and properly feel with their children; and because the overbearing and tyrannical measures into which it leads men, even of good judgment, presents the incumbents of such stations before the public in a most unamiable aspect. Were we to analyse the odium that frequently attaches to the business of teaching, it would probably be found, that contempt of the petty tyranny and despotic caprice to which parents are so frequently compelled to submit their children, constitutes a principal ingredient in its composition.

I hold, then, that every school should possess, in some form or other, a constitutional security of rights and a code of laws, with specific penalties for the breach of them. The advantages of such an arrangement are as great to the principal himself as to the pupils. It delivers him from the odium of an arbitrary tyrant. It enables him to administer justice without associating himself with the circumstances so generally unpleasant to the scholar. He can secure to himself a greater degree of firmness in his awards of justice, and resist those appeals to his personal feelings, which, or I mistake human nature, every teacher is called upon to resist. He shields himself from personal responsibility. He has done all he could. He has, by the publication of determinate laws, shown what are the conditions on which the students receive the privileges and advantages of the school.

But while I would place the power, as well as the necessity of deciding arbitrarily upon the faults of scholars, out of the hands of an individual influenced, as the best man must be, by the variations of the moral as well as the physical atmosphere around him, it is nevertheless necessary to intrust the superintendent of a school with a certain amount of discretionary power, which will be perfectly consistent with the existence of bounding laws; in precisely the same manner as a judge of a civil court has it in his power to make a fine ten or a hundred dollars, as the case may demand. This is necessary in order to meet the shades of difference in the culpability of offences, and the circumstances of extenuation or aggravation by which they may be accompanied.