striking forms of nature and of art before the eye of a child; and thus, not merely impart various information (a secondary object) but feed and furnish the earliest developed of the facultiesthe conceptive; and at the same time bring into action the powers of observation and dis-crimination; and all this may be done without, in the slightest degree stimulating or straining the faculties: the brain is not worked in any such amusements.
By the same simple means, the kindly emotions and placid sympathies of a child’s heart may be set a-going, if a mother’s pencil is equal to the task, and it is not a very difficult one, of roughly sketching the employments, incidents, and accidents of common lifethe trades and occupations of men, and the domestic drama, if the phrase may be used, and the mishaps and catastrophes of the soldier, the sailor, the traveller. A folio of such sketches, swelled from year to year by daily additions, would be an invaluable treasure in a family, and might descend to the mammas of several generations; and how much more creditable to the hand that produced it, than the painted albums, and the bristol-board frippery, that so often load a drawing-room table!
If I mention music, only in passing, and in a word, as a capital means of early educationthe education of non-development and of pleasure, it is not because I think little of its importance, but simply that I do not venture to speak in detail, of what I do not practically understand. It must however be confessed that, highly desirable as is music as a means of pleasurable excitement, the full benefit of it is restricted to those whom nature has specially endowed in this behalf, as well with ear as voice, and with the musical soul. There are families, not wanting in other endowments, but who want what art cannot supplyan organic aptitude in relation to melody.
There can be no doubt that poetry is to be employed as
