Now, comes a lesson in geography. He
takes a piece of chalk, and turns to the black
board. Dot . . dot . . dot. There is a range of
mountains. As soon as its shape is defined,
the children eagerly shout out its name. In
five seconds, the sources of five rivers are
indicated, and named as fast as they are drawn,
by the young vagabonds, who watch the artist's
hand. Down go the rivers to the sea, and—
dot . . dot . . dot . .—a dozen and a half of towns
are indicated, every dot named in chorus.
Then, come the coast line, boundaries of
countries, provinces, and other towns. In ten
minutes, there is, on the board, a cleverly
impromptu map of Germany, and the children
have shouted out the meaning of every dot
and stroke as it was made. They think it
better fun than puzzles. Very pretty!

Now, there he is, beginning at the schoolyard,
talking of its size; then, advancing
to a notion of the street; then, of the
town; then, of the province; and leading
his pupils to an idea of space, and the
extent of country indicated upon such a map.
Truly abominable all this is! Where's the
discipline, I should like to know. If school is
not made the preliminary Hall of Sorrow,
how are men to grow up, able to endure such
a House of Trouble as this world notoriously
is? How can the mind be strengthened more
effectually than by giving it, at first, the daily
task to learn by rote, as exercise of simple
memory. The less the task is understood, the
more the memory is exercised in learning it;
and so, the better for the child. What will
become of a man whose ears, when he was
young, were never bored—whose hands were
never bruised by any ruler—who in his childhood
regarded canes in no other light than as
objects of botanical curiosity? What I say of
a boy is, that he ought to be thrashed. My
notion of education, and I believe the British
nation will bear me out in what I say, my
notion is, that we ought to have a decidedly
uncomfortable school-room—very hot—a
good, dizzy, sleepy place, with lots of repetitions
of the same thing, to ensure monotony—
and that the children should learn by heart
every day a certain quantity of print out of
school-books. That they should show they
have learned it by repeating it before
their teacher, who must sit down and
look big, upon a stool or a chair, and have a
cane or a ruler on a desk before him. That
while ' saying their lessons,' they should stand
uncomfortably, and endure, Spartan like, the
wholesome discipline of fatigue, blows, bodily
fear, and great mental perplexity. That's
the way to learn. It's well known. Don't we
all remember what we learnt that way ? The
teacher who has only to hear whether certain
words printed before him are repeated
accurately—to detect, perhaps, if he don't mind that
trouble, errors in a sum—to direct a writing class
—the teacher who can read, write tolerably,
add, subtract, multiply, and divide with
moderate correctness, and who has the knack
of fillipping upon the head, with a stern
manner, for the sake of being what is called
a strict disciplinarian,—that's the jockey to
manage children!
But those Germans, who write three hundred
volumes on the science of teaching for
every one we get in England on the subject,
think quite otherwise. In all their states by
practice, and in some by special law, the
knocking of heads, the pulling of ears, and
all such wholesome pleasures, are denied the
schoolmaster. Flogging is resorted to, most
rarely. The following is a school regulation
of the Government of—Austria. Austria, my
English friends!

' The teacher must carefully avoid hastily
resorting to the rod; he must never box a
child's ears, or pull or pinch them; or pull its
hair; or hit it on the head, or any tender
part; or use any other instrument of punishment
than a rod or stick; and that only for
great faults. Even then, this kind of punishment
may only be resorted to after having
obtained the consent of the Landrath, and of
the parents of the child, and in their
presence.'

I 'll speak about these German teachers,
presently. The children are required to be
subjected to their influence from the age of
six until the age of fourteen; or to be
otherwise properly educated during that
period. The course of instruction professes
not to cram the mind with facts. Now, I am
an Oxford man, and, I see at once that,
consequently, there is no hope of this plan of
education. It professes, as its chief design,
to awaken thought among the pupils; to
excite a spirit of enquiry. It includes
explanations of the most obvious appearances of
nature—physical geography, a little botany,
and much that can be readily imparted by the
teacher out of a full mind. Nonsense! ' A
little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' And
see the absurdity of teaching about trees, and
clouds, and mountains, and earthquakes, and
omitting the Latin Grammar! How much
more useful an accomplishment is a small
smattering of Latin Grammar, than all this!
It is safe knowledge, too: there's nothing
revolutionary about it. If children are trained
to think, the men who come of them will do
the same; and when the men think, I 'm
persuaded that there 'll be all manner of old
institutions knocked on the head.

Now, the school system of Prussia, which
differs not very greatly from other school
systems of Europe (always with the glorious
exceptions of England, Russia, Turkey, Spain,
Portugal, and the South of Italy), the school
system of Prussia is as follows: First—
Centralization, mark you! That won't do for
us, you know! There's the Minister of
Education at Berlin, assisted by a Council;
he receives information from all sources,
digests it, and endeavours to supply all wants.
Prussia contains eight provinces, and each
province is governed by a Consistorium,