his eye and hand trained, by even the simplest lessons of the common drawing school, would, as a rule, be eager to learn more. It is just here that a system of good night or halftime schools would prove of great practical utility, coupled with some general system of schools of art, such as have been established in England in connection with the South Ken sington Museum, with branches established in every town of any importance, and having avenues open for the exceptionally talented pupils to travel upward toward the central school of art, where they might receive the very highest training that could be given them. Museums and galleries of industry and art are also of surpassing importance, as silent but patient instructors. America is shamefully behind in the matter of having public museums, consid ering the position she holds among the nations of the earth. It is only surprising that her people should have been able to do as well as they have done. Their success must be ascribed to that indomitable energy, characteristic of Americans, rather than to any aid given them by the national or State governments in whose hands, by right, the power rests. if the wi be there, to see that their people have every advantage afforded by other governments to their own people in the training that goes before all work. The writer devoutly hopes this letting alone an important need of the enrichers of the country will soon be changed. It must see that it is but poor economy to stop at only the frame-work, when paying for or preparing for the education of the people.

With facilities for instruction freely open to all, there will be no lack of eager pupils. This is shown by the success of the noble institution given to this city by Peter Cooper, and by the results of the act of Mr. Whitworth, in England, in founding scholarships open to every working man who could win them by his abilities. The example of these two gentlemen is worthy of the earnest consideration of the swarming crop of millionaires America is produc ing. Enriched by labor, they cannot do a more graceful thing than to help labor to further help itself.

LOUIS J. HINTON.

THE OBJECTS OF THE KINDERGARTEN.

THE NAME "KINDERGARTEN."

Fanny Fern gives a very amusing account of her sleepless nights, in endeavoring to find a suitable name for her last new book, and how, when toward the gray dawn one morning she jumped out of bed, exclaiming, "I've got it-Ginger-Snaps." Her husband thought she had been seized with a sudden fit of lunacy, and mildly inquired what it was she had? "You stupid thing, a name to my book." "I have got it-Cosmos," Alexander von Humboldt one day exclaimed to his most intimate friend, Karl August Varnhagen von der Ense, with whom he had consulted for years in regard to the most proper and significant name of his excellent and "immortal work." I have got it-Kindergarten," Frederick Froebel exclaimed one fine summer evening, when, walking in the Thuringian Mountains, arm in arm with his most intimate friend, Wilhelm Middendorff, they came to one of the loveliest spots conceivable. This was only thirty-two years ago. It took Froebel more than fifty-five years of his life before he could exclaim I have got it-Kindergarten," or the "paradise of childhood," as the kindergarten has properly been called. The somewhat fanciful but not altogether figurative name of kindergarten was selected, allowing poetical lovers of childhood to indulge in association of a beautiful garden-full of happy children with that garden of Eden in which the human race spent its infancy. The word Eden signifies pleasure, and the garden of Eden might be called the place or garden of pleasure.

THE THREE OBJECTS OF THE KINDERGARTEN.

In Germany, where the system has been tried for many years, the objects of the kindergarten have been considered under three heads: In the first place, it is to protect the children from the hurtful influences of nature, and from the corruptions of society; secondly, it is to provide the most improving kinds of play and occupation for children, as well as the purest, most devoted moral guidance, where that of the mother has been removed; thirdly, it is to afford the basis of cultivating the art of infant training, and a knowledge of the principles of education among women.

TO OBTAIN THE FIRST OBJECT,

a spacious, airy, dry room, with a garden attached to it, is to be procured by the united efforts of several neighboring families. Twelve will be found a convenient average number of children for one kindergarten. There should not be more than twice that number, nor fewer than half. From room and garden must be removed all objects that might injure the children during their play, or might be destroyed by them. The dress of the children must be simple, calculated to stand wear and tear. An incalculable amount of moral injury is kept from the children by the kindergarten, which removes them, at least for a part of the day, from persons unfit for infant training. All persons are unfit to educate who are themselves not educated, or educated badly. Therefore, domestic servants are, in general, unfit company for children, as was preached by Locke nearly two hundred years ago. In the case of mothers alone, and of the nearest female relatives, it may be supposed that love and instinct make up for the want of skill in education to a certain degree. But the females, who, as hired servants, have so much to do with the early training of our children, are notoriously incompetent in both respects. Their kindness is apt to turn into flattery, their strictness into cruelty. Many of them are abusive in language, vulgar in sentiment, in behavior, in everything. Their moral standard is generally low; their opinions and notions are disfigured by prejudice, ignorance, and superstition. Yet it is to these persons that we intrust our children at the very time that their natures are most tender and pliant, and when their dispositions are forming for good or for evil. It is one of the chief merits of the kindergarten system that it saves our little ones from being exposed to such influences; for uneducated females are expressly excluded from all share in their management. At the age in question, moreover, children are particularly unfit for being left to their own society, though they are so much the more benefited by being collected around their trainer. In one sense they are innocent, because ignorant of the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. Allow them to congregate as an untended flock, and there shoots forth a growth of rank passions, anger, violence, cruelty, (particularly to animals,) destructiveness, jealousy, cowardice, and folly. But bring these children together, with their minds turned, not against each other, but toward the superior mind of an educated person among them, who has food for their minds, who gives them games and improving occupations, whom, therefore, they love and revere, and their natures seem changed-the animal part tamely serves the angelic. Such is the process of the kindergarten. It is the garden in which the drone

part in man is to be cultivated from infancy.

THE SECOND AND POSITIVE OBJECT

of the kindergarten is to supply the children with the favoring influences of nature and civEzation, and to secure for them the best moral guidance. Of the natural objects which should surround children the most beneficial will be the garden, with grass-plat, graveled walks, some banks of sand, clay, or mold, some water, stones, vegetation, more or less. according to circumstances. A supply of natural products for play-material, such as leaves, flowers, seeds, shells, feathers, pebbles, sticks, thorns, barks, moss, &c., will be collected in walks with the children. There is nothing that gives children more improving pleasure than little foraging expeditions, which, indeed, form an important part of the system. It is wonderful to what an infinite variety of purposes such material will be put, spontaneously, by the children; how much inventive power will be developed, and how useful all this may be made for a knowledge of nature at a later stage.

More important for later scientific knowledge are the artificial products which are te serve for playthings. Ready-made toys are almost entirely excluded from the kindergarten. and should be nearly so from the nursery. Their influence is of little value for children, as that of ready-made truths and opinions for adults, in matters in which they ought to be enabled to judge for themselves. The best use that children generally make of toys is to break them, to examine how they are made and what they are composed of, and to make of them something to their own taste. For such naughtiness, which, however, cannot happen in the kindergarten, they are, of course, punished in the nursery. Something ready-made, however, is necessary, only it should be simple and not too plentiful. The kindergarten gives what is required in the shape of cubic bricks, tablets of wood, little sticks of certain pro portionate lengths for laying figures, or sharpened to be stuck into softened peas, for formite the shapes of crystals and other structures, paper for folding and cutting out figures and ornaments, clay for modeling, scissors, harmless knives, slates, pencils, and other similar things. Here, also, it is quite wonderful to see what little children will make out of the old nursery regime, how skillful their little hands become, and how much more their minds are intent on constructing than on breaking them. But when the play-room, the garden. and playthings are provided, success will still depend on the manner in which they a used, and therefore on the person who conducts the children's occupations. For the most grateful, though by no means easy, duty a class of persons must be secured who are nsterally fond of children and inclined to enter into their feelings, who easily perceive the wants and are rich in resources to supply them-persons of a pure, loving heart, a cultivated mind, and possessed of the accomplishments which grace our educated females; for they must be able to sing songs, invent games, tell stories, and draw pictures to illustrate them. know something about natural history, have a distinct notion of the powers of the huma mind, and the general laws of their development, and understand the principles of mora philosophy-at all events, sufficiently to know that a little child must not be treated too early as a responsible agent, and can hardly deserve punishment any more than an anima. or a table. By such knowledge alone can the gross mistakes so commonly committed in the training of children be avoided.

AN APPROPRIATE WORK FOR YOUNG AND ACCOMPLISHED WOMEN.

Excepting mothers, no other class of persons can be more fit or worthy to reign in the kindergarten than the well-educated and accomplished young ladies of modern society, the very class with whom at present we do not know what to do. Social science is clamorous in demanding for a large portion of that class a more useful employment than to wait for

husbands.

Let the kindergarten system become general and proper employment is found, to the great benefit of every future generation. It may, with reason, be maintained that every ablebodied man should be prepared to be a soldier; every female should be equally qualified to educate children. The country has not always enemies to be killed, but it has always s young generation to be reared. Rank makes no exception as to the soldier; so ought als the claim on the female sex to train up the new generation be general. In whatever rank the kindergarten be established, its training will be worthy of an offspring destined to be come free moral agents, conscious of immortality. In Germany, the land of education, it has, from its beginning, been favored by the great of the land. The mother of the Coun de Paris took her little son to a kindergarten near Eisenach, in which he received some of his earliest education. And even princesses have, in the kindergarten, tried their hands. infant-training.

THE THIRD OBJECT OF THE KINDERGARTEN.

In the third place, then, the kindergarten is to form the basis of cultivating the art o infant-training and a knowledge of the principles of education among women. And because education, physical, moral, and intellectual, cannot be made an object of study in books the kindergarten has suggested the plan of connecting with normal institutions this highest or finishing education of the female sex. Where there are favorable localities there se be established model kindergartens for practical demonstrations of the system, and couse

of lectures should be delivered to all female students, in all branches bearing upon the education of children, both within and beyond the limits of the kindergarten. And what sciences and arts do not bear upon this subject? If there be some minimum of knowledge and proficiency in a subject that must be possessed before it can be taught, there is no maximum that may be surpassed. The ability to sing a little song well, and accompany the children on the piano, which belongs to the kindergarten, will not be impaired by such proficiency as will do for the drawing-room; to draw on a school-board a scene including animals and persons, composed, of course, or arranged by herself, though not requiring the talent of Rosa Bonheur, may test the skill of an artist. To make a set of little toys from the five egular solids, with sticks stuck into softened peas, and likewise pyramids prisms, plane igures, &c., and give them the right names, as to divide a cube into its fractional parts, and let the children perceive that one-eighth is exactly two-fourths-these mathematical lays, the most improving of the kindergarten, demand a knowledge of geometry-the sounder the better. Why do young ladies learn geometry? Here is a useful and worthy object. But there is much more to be done. Children will as easily learn French and German songs in the kindergarten as to talk French and German in the nursery. Then here are a thousand questions to be answered about matters of natural history and physics. Why does the brook always flow? where does it run? What is the moon? why does it shine where does it go? What is the wind? What makes the waves of the sea? What is the use of this plant? Why does a ball fall; a soap-bubble rise? Why do flowers stuck in the sand wither so soon? Where does this animal live? If not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young child. The wisdom of the deepest philosopher may be insufficient for answering some of these questions, but a judicious reply, striking out the first spark of reflection, may start the germ for the later researches of a Newton.

WHAT IS REQUIRED OF THE TEACHERS.

The most essential part of the whole system is the methodical arrangement of the exercises and the games, and the explanations given by Froebel to those who are to conduct them. To know them all, is quite a study; to apply them well, an art; to understand their significance, their effort, the order and manner in which they ought to be given to the children, is & science. The young trainer must know what to select from the great store to suit the different ages, how long to continue one exercise so as not to overstretch the faculties. There is great power united in her hands, and, not to misuse it sue must well understand the infant nature on which it is exercised.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND PERFECTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL.

The kindergarten involves the best of the Pestalozzian system, and some of Froebel's principles were alreaЛly laid down by Locke. The kindergarten is one of the consequences of that principle of modern education which aims at the perfect cultivation of the human individual, individual perfection. This is to be the grand result of education; and the way to it, the method, is the free development of the mental faculties. Froebel saw this principle enjoined in Christianity, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect," and considered his system eminently Christian. He tried to carry out the developing method into all branches of instruction, first in the school at Keilhau, and afterward applied it to infant training. This method may be defined as education, guided by the true knowl edge of human nature, as by the philosophy of the human mind. A little of that know!edge shows that the education of the youngest requires the greatest skill, because everything belonging to their education must be done for them, while, as they grow older, they learn more and more to educate themselves, till, at the age of manhood, they are left to selfeducation. Thus as young people grow oider the educator has less and less to do for them. When, with the sixth or seventh year, the child begins to reflect, he is capable of conceiving general purposes, though in particular cases, and of employing means for them, that is, of working. His trying to get and use means for ends is learning, and fits him for the school. The occupations of the kindergarten are merely a playing at school, and in this sense the kindergarten is a play school, in which, if children are not exactly taught to play, they are guided how to play. They are full of activity, and all that is wanted is the supply of proper material and liberty to exert their powers upon it; these powers are summed up in imagination, first betrayed by the impulse of the will to produce some effect, and then defined by imitation. The first plays are imitations of motions and actions which the children have perceived, and which the trainer takes advantage of in order to teach them graceful motions of their limbs and bodies. Of the quiet games, the most simple are those with the natural products obtained from their walks. Next come those with the divided cube, for which each child is supplied, 1st, with a box containing eight cubes, then with one containing eight bricks, then one with some diagonal sections, then one with some diagonal sections of cubes, and lastly one of bricks with subdivisions. These blocks are first applied to the construction of familiar objects, as houses, chairs, tables, everything which may be included under the forms of use, and which are interesting even to the youngest. The

forms of beauty and symmetry require more sense, but are found to be inexhaustibly attractive. And last of all come the forms of knowledge, which familiarize them with the geometrical properties of the cube, and the names of its sides and lines. Then tablets are introduced, some of equilateral, some of triangular shape, which impress them with the peculiarity of the numbers three, six, nine, as squares do with the numbers two, four, eight. At last, sticks and peas, or sticks alone, serve as material for forms of use, of beauty, and of knowledge. The latter may lead far into a knowledge, of course merely intuitive, of geometrical relations and laws. The use of sticks disciplines the eye for drawing, which also requires skillful manipulation of the pencil. The age from three to seven years seems to be the period of fantastic invention, in which latent genius is developed, and which may be compared with the plowing and sowing season of husbandry. This most importan: season of childhood is, how often, allowed to pass neglected. Poor children in the country are often better provided with right occupations than the children of the rich, which may in some measure account for the genius which springs up in country colleges. It will thus be observed that the material given to children is at first the most natural, and is followed by the more and more artificial. The latter, again, is given at first in the most simple and palpable shape. and is followed by representations of abstractions more and more removed from the concrete. The highest intellectual effort in the kindergarten is the Pestalozzian form of drawing on slates or drawing in books ruled over with small squares. This drawing, though entre under the rule of imagination, prepares for proper drawing, for writing, and for geometry better than anything else. Children, at an early age, become excessively fond of it; COEsider it quite an amusement, and yet will work at it an hour without getting tired, so that it may be necessary to check their eagerness. Of poetry, accompanied by music, great use is made in the kindergarten, which offers a most extensive field to the poetical and musica genius of ladies who love children and the pure joy of their paradise. In Germany, Hotman von Fallersleben has shown, by his "Kinderlieder," that verses which please little chil dren may have poetical charms for every period of life, and some of the best composers have added to the beauty of the words by their graceful composition. The first visible effect of a well-conducted kindergarten on the children is that it tames them. They soon evince that their happiness is increased. Though more gentle, they become more lively. Their affection for their trainer, the kindergarten, is great, yet their love to their parents does Let seem to diminish. It is found that at home they are much more quiet, because they son find a quiet amusement and eagerly engage in it. The genial occupation of their brain. combined with the bodily exercises and the happy humor in which they seem to be, fo hours, when in the kindergarten, cannot but favor an increase of their natural faculties. A generation that has passed through the developing system which begins in the kindergarten will have learned self-command or virtue, will be possessed of pure and gentine taste, and will be self dependent both in thought and action. As a striking testimony to this effect, we may take the proceedings of the Russian government against that syster since 1850. Fichte, in his addresses to the German nation, has recommended national education on the developing system. John Jahn applied it to physical education by his "Turawesen," or gymnastics, which quickly spread over Germany, and was as quickly put down as politically dangerous. Froebel tried to apply it to general education, but the German governments, particularly Austria and Prussia, were frightened at the spirit of independence from which the system proceeded and which it fostered. Prussia, receding more and more from her glorious efforts of 1813, almost eradicated the developing principle from her national education, once so renowned. But a better spirit is alive again in Germany. "Turnen" is again flourishing, and national education, on the developing principle, again appears as one of the great objects of interest to the German nation. Consequences of the kindergarten syste on the female portion of the population will proceed from two sources at once; from the better training of children, and from the complete education of those who are to train then The advantages of a system which places infant training in the hands of educated women can, perhaps, not be too highly estimated.*

EXPLANATORY NOTE OF THE PLAN OF THE EXERCISES IN THE KINDERGARTEN.

The time of occupation in the kindergarten is three or four hours on each week-day, usually from 9 to 12 or 1 o'clock; the changes from one to another occupy from twenty to thirty minutes. It is worthy of remark that the arrangements and furniture must have a special adaptati to the method of teaching. Thus, for instance, the desks are covered with lines, which make squares of an inch; this teaches the child to arrange his material in an orderly manner. How ever, all occupations that can be engaged in out of doors should be carried on in the gander whenever the season and weather permit. The character of the plays is such that some struction is combined with the amusement, for pleasant games introduced are almost always accompanied by singing. There are movement plays, so-called, symbolic plays, in wh the forces of nature are introduced, as in the games of the wind-mill and the water-whee &c., or the children imitate the flying of birds, the swimming of fish, &c., or they represen the different tradesmen, as the cooper, miller, farmer, &c., for instance, the motions of su ing, mowing, threshing, &c. By all these and similar plays the relation of one to anothe

The foregoing article has been prepared partly from the writings of Carl Froebel.