so take books only for fashionable amusements, or impertinent troubles, good for nothing.

"The Lord's prayer, the creed, and ten commandments, it is necessary he should learn perfectly by heart; but, I think, not by reading them himself in his primer, but by somebody's repeating them to him, even before he can read. But learning by heart, and learning to read, should not, I think, be mixed, and so one made to clog the other. But his learning to read should be made as little trouble or business to him as might be.

"What other books there are in English of the kind of those above mentioned, fit to engage the liking of children, and tempt them to read, I do not know; but am apt to think, that children, being generally delivered over to the method of schools, where the fear of the rod is to inforce, and not any pleasure of the employment to invite them to learn; this sort of useful books, amongst the number of silly ones that are of all sorts, have yet had the fate to be neglected: and nothing that I know has been considered of this kind out of the ordinary road of the horn-book, primer, psalter, Testament, and Bible.

"As for the Bible, which children are usually employed in, to exercise and improve their talent in reading, I think the promiscuous reading of it through by chapters as they lie in order, is so far from being of any advantage to children, either for the perfecting their reading, or principling their religion, that perhaps a worse could not be found. For what pleasure or encouragement can it be to a child, to exercise himself in reading those parts of a book where he understands nothing? And how little are the law of Moses, the Song of Solomon, the prophecies in the Old, and the epistles and apocalypse in the New Testament, suited to a child's capacity? And though the history of the Evangelists, and the Acts, have something easier, yet, taken all together, it is very disproportional to the understanding of childhood. I grant, that the principles of religion are to be drawn from thence, and in the words of the scripture; yet none should be proposed to a child, but such as are suited to a child's capacity and notions. But it is far from this to read through the whole Bible, and that for reading's sake. And what an odd jumble of thoughts must a child have

in his head, if he have any at all, such as he should have concerning religion, who in his tender age reads all the parts of the Bible indifferently, as the word of God, without any other distinction! I am apt to think, that this, in some men, has been the very reason why they never had clear and distinct thoughts of it all their lifetime.

"And now I am by chance fallen on this subject, give me leave to say, that there are some parts of the scripture, which may be proper to be put into the hands of a child to engage him to read; such as are the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of David and Goliath, of David and Jonathan, &c.; and others, that he should be made to read for his instruction; as that, 'What you would have others do unto you, do you the same unto them;' and such other easy and plain moral rules, which, being fitly chosen, might often be made use of, both for reading and instruction together; and so often read, till they are thoroughly fixed in his memory; and then afterwards, as he grows ripe for them, may in their turns, on fit occasions, be inculcated as the standing and sacred rules of his life and actions. But the reading of the whole scripture indifferently, is what I think very inconvenient for children, till, after having been made acquainted with the plainest fundamental parts of it, they have got some kind of general view of what they ought principally to believe and practise, which yet, I think, they ought to receive in the very words of the scripture, and not in such as men, prepossessed by systems and analogies, are apt in this case to make use of, and force upon them. Dr. Worthington, to avoid this, has made a catechism, which has all its answers in the precise words of the scripture, a thing of good example, and such a sound form of words, as no Christian can except against, as not fit for his child to learn. Of this, as soon as he can say the Lord's prayer, creed, and ten commandments by heart, it may be fit for him to learn a question every day, or every week, as his understanding is able to receive, and his memory to retain them. And, when he has this catechism perfectly by heart, so as readily and roundly to answer to any question in the whole book, it may be convenient to lodge in his mind the remaining moral rules, scattered up and down in the Bible, as the best exercise of his memory, and that

which may be always a rule to him, ready at hand in the whole conduct of his life."

INSTRUCTIVE GAMES.

There is some reason to apprehend that the amusing games of the kind mentioned by Locke in the above extract may be continued too long, or relied on too much. We think it may be well enough to have a child "cozened into a knowledge of his letters" in this way, at an age when play is properly his whole business; or that he may be allowed to play at geography at a later age, if he is made to regard the game as play and not as study; but nothing of this sort should ever be considered as a part of the serious business of instruction, or admitted as an exercise at school.

The danger of carrying "instructive games" too far, is thus happily noticed by Sir Walter Scott

"I am aware I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso's infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles, and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired by spending a few hours a week at a new and complicated edition of the royal game of the goose. There wants but one step further, and the creed and ten com

mandments may be taught in the same manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm. It may in the mean time be a subject of serious consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study; whether those who learn history by the cards, may not be led to prefer the means to the end; and whether, were we to teach religion in the way of sport, our pupils might not thereby be gradually reduced to make sport of their religion."

The same ideas, with some variations and additions, occur in the North American Review, as follows:

"When our fathers were children, they learned nothing without paying for it a full price, in labour; our children have all sorts of expedients and facilities contrived, by which they may play and learn too, and perhaps the result will be, that their children will refuse to be cheated into learning, and so play all. In these days, every science and every art is made a play-thing. One child is putting together dissected maps, and thereby learns geography; another is diverting himself with a musical game, very scientific in its principles, and no doubt equally amusing and instructive; and another, is set to work upon the royal game of goose, by way of becoming an expert arithmetician. Now there is some danger, perhaps, lest the children should carry the sport too far, and when their instructers turn the things they would teach into games, the children may possibly make game of the things they should learn.

"Man must work; he cannot earn physical or intellectual sustenance or wealth, but by physical or intellectual labour. All the concerns of this world must undergo a great change, and stand in very different relations to each other, before this decree will be revoked; at all events, it stands now, and is not to be evaded; and therefore, a knowledge of the elements of the sciences,-that is, a superficial, indistinct, indigested knowledge of certain

desultory and very general elements of a few sciences,is hardly recompense enough for the abandonment of a habit of prompt, willing, and earnest exertion, which a boy may and should acquire while his character is growing.

"But it may be asked, since children must and ought to play, why not make their amusements edifying, and useful, in such measure and manner as may be possible? We have no objections to this, so long as their amusements are known and regarded as what they really are. It is only when they are considered important vehicles of instruction, that they become worse than useless by favouring the prevalent mistake, that the principal object of education is not to invigorate, but replenish the mind, and the yet more injurious notion, that a good thing may be gotten without toil.

"Set your child at work upon a task, suited to his age and capacity; make him work as hard as you can, without doing him harm, and compel him to learn and feel that labour, the necessary evil of life, must be borne, and if borne patiently, diminishes, till in the end it disappears. A distinct practical conviction of this truth is worth a hundred times over, all the music, or geography, or history, or mathematics, that a child ever learned from his playthings, since the fashion of this day came in."

USE OF SIGNIFICANT WORDS FOR FIRST LESSONS IN READING AND SPELLING.

The following observations on this method of instruction are extracted from" Northmore's Education on Principles," a work published in England some thirty years since. It seems to have been recently brought forward as a new invention.

"The usual method of teaching children to read by syllables consisting of two or three letters without mean