pil's mind; and there would not be much opportunity to increase his success by careful observation and study of a large number of children. The first recognition of teaching as an art, founded upon a rather indefinite science of the mind, seems to have been shown by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, when they required every individual who should teach in their schools to spend two or three years as an apprentice, observing the ways of a master, who was supposed to have become familiar with the best art of teaching through his own experience in observation and experimentation. Later, Ratich urged that teaching was an art, and that those who were to practice it must become familiar with its rules and devices before trying it, lest those whom they should attempt to instruct should suffer by their ignorance and unskillfulness until experience should have taught them wisdom. In the eighteenth century Francke embodied this idea in his schools at Halle, requiring that all his teachers should, before being fully admitted to the profession, spend two or three years in observing others teach, and in reflecting upon the difficulties to be met with and devising means to overcome them. This was the forerunner of the "teacher's seminary," which has latterly spread throughout Germany and all the progressive countries of Europe; and which has crossed over the waters to our own land, where a different name has been taken, but where the same ends are aimed at. Previous to 1833 there were in France, according to Guizot, forty-seven primary normal schools, while at present there are one hundred and seventy-one well-equipped institutions, all of which have become governmental institutions. In 1827 David Stowe established the first normal seminary in Great Britain, at Glasgow; and such great popularity did this attain that other institutions of the same kind sprang up rapidly throughout Scotland and England, while training colleges and professorships of pedagogy in the universities have also been established. The first normal school in our own country began operations at Lexington, Mass., in 1829, and now there is not a State in the Union that has not several of these schools, supported at public expense; while normal colleges and professorships of pedagogy are meeting with favor and multiplying in all parts of the country.
In America there is a problem to be met in the training of teachers that gives very little trouble to many of the countries of the Old World. In Germany, Austria, France, and the other important nations of Europe, teaching has come to be regarded as a profession which, when an individual once enters, he rarely deserts, holding to it for life the same as if he had engaged in the practice of medicine or law. The population of these countries is practically constant, making it possible to determine pretty definitely about how many teachers will be required each year to
