differ and must differ, so must teachers, so
must schools. But no man can be a good
teacher who is a cut and dried man without
any particular character: his individuality
must be strongly marked. He should be,
of course, a man of unimpeachable integrity,
detesting what is base or mean, and beyond
everything hating a lie. He should have
pleasure in his work, be fond of children,
and not think of looking down upon them,
but put faith —and that is a main point which
many teachers will refuse to uphold —put
faith in the good spirit of childhood. He
must honour a child or he cannot educate it,
though he may cram many facts into its head.
It is essential also to the constitution of a
good teacher that, whatever his character
may be, he shall not be slow. Children are
not so constituted as to be able to endure
slowness patiently. He must also not be
destitute of imagination, for he will have
quick imaginations to develop and to satisfy.
Furthermore it is essential that he should
deeply feel the importance of his office, and
utterly disdain to cringe to any parent, or to
haggle for the price of services that no money
can fairly measure. In all that I here say, I
speak with direct reference to schools for the
children of those people who are well to do
in the world, and can afford to support the
kind of teacher they desire. Schools of that
kind ought to be in the hands of men trained
long and carefully in many studies. Assistant
teachers should be men qualified to aid, by
undertaking, each a single branch of study in
which they have obtained perfection; but the
head of a school should carry its brains and
be, as nearly as he may be, versed in all its
business. It is not for him to teach a speciality
but to command respect by the breadth
of his attainments, to link all parts of his
plan together, and unite them in the boys'
minds into one great whole. He should add
to his classical knowledge an acquaintance
with, at the very least, two modern languages;
he should know how to account for, and to
make comprehensible to boys, the reasonings
of mathematics; he should have studied and
be able to teach, the history of the world as a
whole; he should be well read in books of
travel, and have a full elementary knowledge
of the entire circle of the sciences. He should
be well read in the literature of several countries
and of his own day; he should study the
political and social movements that are going
on about him, and employ even the news of
the day in his teaching, by applying it to
school knowledge and school knowledge to it.
He should be able to bring every study into
visible subservience to the best and
commonest aims of life, showing the children
at once how to think and how to make all
acquired knowledge available and helpful
in their daily work. All this may be too
much for one man; but it is not too much
for one man and a library. The proper
breadth of cultivation given, depth must be
maintained by constant and habitual study.
The most learned teacher ought incessantly
to read and think, so that he may be on each
topic as full-minded as he should be when he
proposes to give lessons to a child. The good
teacher must be devoted to his work; if he
want pleasure and excitement he must find
them in the schoolroom and the study. For
it is only when his teaching gives great
pleasure to himself, that it can give any
pleasure whatever to his pupils. The parent
must not grudge to a worthy teacher the
most liberal reward that lies within his
means. It is not to be supposed that any
large body of men can be induced to devote
themselves heart and soul to an ill-paid
profession, which demands peculiar talents
and expensive training, with a toil both in
preparation and in action that can never be
remitted.

Crotchet the Third. Of the child taught.
There is no fault of character in boy or girl
that cannot be destroyed or rendered harmless,
if right treatment be applied to it in time;
that is to say, within the first twelve
years. We inherit tempers and tendencies
which sometimes, when they are neglected,
bring us to harm. The bent of character is
settled before birth. Anything cannot be made
of any boy or girl, but something can be made
of every child, which shall be satisfactory, and
good, and useful. The tendency that would,
under a course of neglect or bad management,
produce out of a cross infant a self-willed and
dogged man, may be so managed as to
develop into firmness tempered with right
judgment. Mismanagement at home hinders
good management at school, and, for a generation
or two, that difficulty will hurt the operation
of the best school systems. There belong,
however, to the spirit of childhood and youth,
quahties through which a true-hearted appeal
is sure of a true-hearted reception. Children
are good, and they are so created by Divine
Wisdom, as to be wonderfully teachable. They
are, however, also so created as to require free
action and movement, to be incapable of
sustaining long-continued mental exertion, to be
restless. It is not in the constitution of a child
to sit day after day for three or five consecutive
hours upon a form. If the schoolmaster subject
chirdren to unnatural conditions, and
Nature assert herself in any boy or girl more
visibly than discipline admires, the teacher,
not the child, is then in fault, and it is he or
she —if any one —who should stand in the
corner, do an imposition, or be whipped.
It is only possible to teach a child well, while
accommodating one's ways humbly to the
ways of Nature.

Crotchet the Fourth. On the constitution
of a school. Since there is no such thing as
a plan universal for all teachers; since each
school should maintain its own individuality;
since a school of which the plan is an abstraction
is a dead school; I can only express my
notions on this subject by explaining what