of teaching by grammar, authors and exercises, more brief in itself and more easy and delightful to the teacher and scholar. And for what I have done in this kind, these arguments were especial inducements. That,

1. It is not only possible but necessary to make children understand their tasks, from the'r very first entrance into learning, seeing they must every one bear his own burden, and not rely upon their fellows altogether in what they do.

2. It is possible and meet for every teacher so to ground his scholars that a change of masters may not much hinder their progress in learning.

3. Things most familiar and obvious to the senses are first to be learned, and such as may be an easy step towards those which are next to be attained.

4. The most vocabulas and phrases of ordinary discourse may and ought to be taught together with the Latin Grammar, and the lowest sort of school authors.

5. Boys ought to know the meaning and how to make use of each rule as they learn, yet so as they be not forced upon understanding it.

6. The most useful books ought to be read, and may be taught after one manner in every grammar-school.

7. Children must be furnished with store of matter, and able to write a good style, and showed how to imitate their authors for making exercises, before they be put to use their own invention.

8. It is tyranny in the master to beat a scholar for not doing that which he knoweth not how to go about; so that he must first know him to be well able, and then he may more justly punish his neglect.

9. Many young schoolmasters are more puzzled about framing to themselves a good method than toiled in the exercise of teaching school.

10. No man ever had such an acute and direct method, but another able scholar might observe and follow it.

11. Many masters that are excellent in perfecting scholars have not the patience to ground them, and many that have the skill to ground a scholar well in his rudiments are not of ability to bring him on to perfection in grammatical exercises.

12. In many schools, one master alone beareth the whole burden of teaching, without any help of an usher.

13. Every one that teacheth a grammar-school is not able to make a right choice, nor knoweth he the true use of our best classical authors.

14. It is a prime part of a schoolmaster to instruct his scholars well in the principles of the Christian religion, and to make them acquainted with the Holy Scriptures.

15. It is an utter undoing to many scholars to be sent ungrounded to the universities; and parents are generally unwilling to have their children tarry long at the school, and therefore it is good for masters to make use of the shortest and surest way of teaching.

16. It is very necessary and hath been ever wished that some of our most famous and best schoolmasters would for the benefit of others set themselves to work to find out and publish the exactest method of teaching, which might be generally received till a better were known; for by that means they should do much good to the Church and Commonwealth, and somewhat herein advantage themselves, seeing every parent will be willing to have his son taught by one whom he knoweth to be constantly diligent in a good way of teaching.

And the hopes that I conceived hereby to provoke my betters hath especially encouraged me (at last) to yield to my friends' importunity, in setting down this Method of Teaching, and writing down also this form of School Government, which I heartily commend to God's heavenly blessing and the candid censure of the more judicious, hoping that as I intend chiefly the general good, so none will requite me with malicious obtrectation, which if any shall do, I charitably pray for them beforehand, that God would for Christ's sake forgive them, and grant that I may not heed what they write or say concerning me or my labors, so as to be discouraged in my honest endeavors for the public service.

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίσοις θεῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη, ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία. λεκ, β. ιδ.

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

THE STRAP-ROD-FERULE-BIRCH.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.

It is is recorded of an old-fashioned schoolmaster that in the course of fifty years he administered to his pupils nearly half a million canings, and a hundred and twenty-four thousand proper floggings! This pedagogue, who in the days of Solomon would have been a man after that wise king's own heart, may be taken as the type of a class of teachers who flourished in 'the good old days' -rigid disciplinarians who never spared the rod nor spoiled the child. Happy school-boys of the present day have but a faint notion of those times, or of the severities undergone at school by their fathers and grandfathers.

Instruments and Agents.

The Romans, who carried the art of whipping to a high degree of perfection, had a number of recognized instruments for different offenses. Horace and Juvenal particularize three-namely, scutica, ferula, and flagellum. Scutica was a strap of leather or parchment, and ferula a rod or stick; both of these were employed as instruments of correction in schools, and, with several alterations and improvements, have been handed down to recent times. Flagellum was a whip or lash of leathern thongs or twisted cords tied to a wooden handle, and sharpened with knots, and sometimes with small bits of iron and lead. Some doubts exist as to the exact form of the ferula of ancient times-whether it was a rod, or switch, or strap; but the means of determining its more modern shape are not so scanty.

In the oak carvings of the cathedrals of the middle ages, the figure of a monkish schoolmaster, holding a rod ready to beat a boy on the breech, is quite frequent. The ferule of modern days was a more ingenious instrument, and was not used on the breech like the above mentioned, but only on the hand. It was made of wood, shaped somewhat like a small bat, and in many cases it was furnished with a small hole in the center of the broad part, which raised a blister on the delinquent's hand and made the punishment very sharp. Thirty years ago the spatula used by London schoolmasters was known amongst the boys as 'Jonathan.'

⚫ In some annotations on that classical production, Shenstone's Schoolmistress, as published in Barnard's American Journal of Education (III. 453), and gathered into the volume of English Pedagogy, First Series, we intimated our intention of resuming the subject of School Punishment in its various forms, and many abuses, as practiced in different countries. For this purpose we have gathered many illustrations from the traditions of schools, and the painful reminiscences of pupils whom we met. A recent English publication, entitled 'Flagellation and Flagellants—A History of the Rod in different Countries. By Rev. W. M. Cooper, B. A. London: Hotten, Piccadilly,' contains so much material already gathered, that we conclude to make up a chapter at once with extracts, commending the volume itself to those who wish to know how cruel man may prove himself either as teacher or legislator.

The ferula in use at the school of Howgill some forty years ago, is described as being of wood, shaped like a battledore; and the common seals of the grammar schools of Tewkesbury and Camberwell display a formidable battledore in the hands of the master. Lately, there was at Amsterdam, in Holland, an exhibition of objects either belonging or having belonged to school management and discipline. Among the relics exhibited was a ferula, and the figure of a bird. The mode of application was this: the bird was thrown to the offender, who had to take it back to the schoolmaster in order to receive his destined share of slaps on the palm of the hand. In Gerard Dow's picture of the Schoolmaster in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the master holds an instrument of this kind in one hand. The blows of the wooden ferule were called pandies in some parts, and were so far objectionable that they were liable to wound and bruise the hand. There was another form of the ferule, a less objectionable but equally effective instrument. This was a broad leather strap, about ten inches long, the end being rounded, and between four and five inches broad. The other end was tapered to the breadth of an inch and a half, and fastened to a wooden handle. The leather was thick and hammered hard without losing its flexibility. It was used for striking the palm of the hand, and produced a smart tingling sensation.

Juvenal speaks of the Roman school-boys 'drawing back the hand from the ferula,' manum ferulœ subdurimus; and the modern school-boy practices a similar dodge by pulling down the cuff of his jacket over his hand to catch the blow of the laws. The virga, a switch rod, was another instrument of whipping employed among the Romans, and seems to have suggested the use of the birch, which has long been in operation in large public schools. Following the opinion of Solomon, that a rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding,' and 'a whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back,' the punishment of the birch was in general inflicted on the bare posteriors of the offender. For the convenience of the flogger the delinquent was placed on a block or hoisted on the back of one of the older pupils (this last operation was called horsing), and there received his appointed punishment. The custom of horsing is of considerable antiquity, for a painting discovered at Pompeii, still preserved in the Royal Museum at Naples, represents one boy taken upon another boy's back, and suffering the infliction of a flogging. Another instance may be mentioned. The seal of the Louth Grammar School gives a representation of the punishment of the Rod, as applied to a school-boy in the time of Edward VI., accompanied by the inscription. 'Qvi: Parcit: Virge: odit: filiv: 'He that spareth the Rod hateth his son.' In public schools there was an official whose duty it was to perform the operation of flagellation, and this custom has also been handed down from remote times. St. John, in his 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Greeks,' mentions that in the Spartan Republic 'regular floggers, as at our own great schools, always attended the inspectors of public instruction.' In France, the flagellator in a school was called cuistre, which originally signified a cook, and this arose from the fact that in the houses of the nobility, as well as in public schools, the people of the kitchen were supposed to possess peculiar abilities and facilities for performing flagellation. Solomon has said, 'He that spareth the Rod hateth his son; but he that loves him chastises him betimes,' and the maxim has been considered indisputable in

all ages. Schoolmasters have regarded the Rod as absolutely indispensable in the education of the young. The first flogging schoolmaster that we meet with in our reading is Toilus, who used to whip Homer, and who, after performing that operation effectually, assumed the title of Homeromastix. This worthy

man received no other reward for his enterprise than crucifixion, which he suf fered by the orders of King Ptolemy. Horace calls his schoolmaster, who was fond of this discipline, 'the flogging Orbilius' (plagosus Orbilius ;) Quintilian denounces the practice of whipping school-boys on account of its severity and its degrading tendency; and Plutarch, in his Treatise on Education,' says: 'I am of opinion that youth should be impelled to the pursuit of liberal and laudable studies by exhortations and discourses, certainly not by blows and stripes. These are methods of incitement far more suitable to slaves than to the free, on whom they can produce no other effect than to induce torpor of mind and disgust for exertion, from a recollection of the pain and insult of the inflictions endured.'

In German schools the Rod was at one time plied industriously: the operator was called the 'blue man.' Not only boys, but youths up to the age of eighteen or twenty years, were subjected to the Rod. Some professors preferred to inflict the punishment with their own hands; but in general it was inflicted by a man wearing a mask, and having his instrument concealed under a blue cloak (whence the name, the 'blue man,') in the passage before the school-room, and in the presence of the professor; and very few youths could boast, on leaving the gymnasium, of having never been under the care of the 'blue man.'

It is recorded of a Suabian schoolmaster that, during his fifty-one years' superintendence of a large school, he had given 911,500 canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, and 22,700 tasks by heart. It was further calculated that he had made 700 boys stand on peas, 6,000 kneel on a sharp edge of wood, 5,000 wear the fool's cap, and 1,700 hold the rod.

Ravisius Textor, who was rector of the University of Paris, in one of his epistles, writes thus concerning the treatment of boys:-'If they offend, if they are detected in falsehood, if they slip from the yoke, if they murmur against it, or complain in ever so little a degree, let them be severely whipt; and spare neither the scourge nor mitigate the punishment till the proud heart shall evidently be subdued, and they shall have become smoother than oil, and softer than a pumpkin. And if they endeavor by mollifying speeches to disarm the preceptor's anger, let all their words be given to the wind.'

In England, the school-boy has been, time out of mind, subject to the birch. In the middle ages, we read of children running to the shrines of saints, in the hope of there obtaining protection against the cruelty of their masters. A boy, in that hope, once clung to the tomb of St. Adrian, at Canterbury, and the master, notwithstanding the sanctity of the place, proceeded to inflict chastisement. The first and second strokes were allowed to be given with impunity, but the outraged saint stiffened the master's arm as he was about to inflict the third; and it was only when he had implored forgiveness of the boy, and the boy had interceded for him, that the use of his arm was restored! Another legend is related where the miracle was still more surprising:-An ill-used boy having filed, as usual, to the shrine, the master declared that not even although the