have us make all nursery rhymes and garden
sports abstrusely didactic. He meant no
more than to put his own teaching into songs
and games, to show clearly that whatever is
necessary to be said or done to a young child,
may be said or done merrily or playfully, and
although he was essentially a schoolmaster,
he had no faith in the terrors commonly
associated with his calling.

Froebel's nursery songs are associated
almost invariably with bodily activity on the
part of the child. He is always, as soon as he
becomes old enough, to do something while
the song is going on, and the movements
assigned to him are cunningly contrived so
that not even a joint of a little finger shall be
left unexercised. If he be none the better,
he is none the worse for this. The child
is indeed unlucky that depends only on care
of this description for the full play of its
body; but there are some children so
unfortunate, and there are some parents who will
be usefully reminded by those songs, of
the necessity of procuring means for the free
action of every joint and limb. What is done
for the body is done, in the same spirit for
the mind, and ideas are formed, not by song
only. The beginning of a most ingenious
course of mental training by a series of
playthings is made almost from the very
first.

A box containing six soft balls differing in
colour, is given to the child. It is Froebel's
"first gift." Long before it can speak the infant
can hold one of these little balls in its fingers,
become familiar with its spherical shape and
its colour. It stands still, it springs, it rolls.
As the child grows, he can roll it and run
after it, watch it with sharp eyes, and
compare the colour of one ball with the colour of
another, prick up his ears at the songs
connected with his various games with it, use it
as a bond of playfellowship with other
children, practice with it first efforts at
self-denial, and so forth. One ball is suspended
by a string, it jumps, — it rolls—here—there
—over—up,—turns left—turns right
ding-dong—tip-tap—falls — spins; fifty ideas may
be connected with it. The six balls, three
of the primary colours, three of the secondary,
may be built up in a pyramid; they
may be set rolling, and used in combination
in a great many ways giving sufficient
exercise to the young wits that have all
knowledge and experience before them.

Froebel's " second gift " is a small box
containing a ball, cube and roller (the two last
perforated), with a stick and string. With
these forms of the cube, sphere, and cylinder,
there is a great deal to be done, and learnt.
They can be played with at first according to
the child's own humour: will run, jump,
represent carts or anything. The ancient
Egyptians, in their young days as a nation,
piled three cubes on one another and called
them the three Graces. A child will, in the
same way, see fishes in stones, and be content
to put a cylinder upon a cube, and say that is
papa on horseback. Of this element of ready
fancy in all childish sport, Froebel took full
advantage. The ball, cube, and cylinder may
be spun, swung, rolled, and balanced, in so
many ways as to display practically all their
properties. The cube, spun upon the stick
piercing it through opposite edges, will look
like a circle, and so forth. As the child
grows older, each of the forms may be
examined definitely, and he may learn from
observation to describe it. The ball may be
rolled down an inclined plane and the
acceleration of its speed observed. Most of the
elementary laws of mechanics may be made
practically obvious to the child's
understanding.

The " third gift" is the cube divided once
in every direction, By the time a child gets
this to play with, he is three years old: of age
ripe for admission to an Infant Garden. The
infant garden is intended for the help of
children between three years old and seven.
Instruction in it—always by means of play—
is given for only two or three hours in the
day; such instruction sets each child, if
reasonably helped at home, in the right
train of education for the remainder of its
time.

An infant garden must be held in a large
room abounding in clear space for child's
play, and connected with a garden into which
the children may adjourn whenever weather
will permit. The garden is meant chiefly to
assure, more perfectly, the association of
wholesome bodily exercise with mental
activity. If climate but permitted, Froebel
would have all young children taught entirely
in the pure, fresh air, while frolicking in
sunshine among flowers. By his system he aimed
at securing for them bodily as well as mental
health, and he held it to be unnatural that
they should be cooped up in close rooms, and
glued to forms, when all their limbs twitch
with desire for action, and there is a warm
sunshine out of doors. The garden, too, should
be their own; every child the master or
mistress of a plot in it, sowing seeds and watching
day by day the growth of plants, instructed
playfully and simply in the meaning of what
is observed. When weather forbids use of the
garden, there is the great, airy room which
should contain cupboards, with a place for
every child's toys and implements; so that a
habit of the strictest neatness may be properly
maintained. Up to the age of seven there is
to be no book work and no ink work; but
only at school a free and brisk, but systematic
strengthening of the body, of the senses, of
the intellect, and of the affections, managed
in such a way as to leave the child prompt for
subsequent instruction,already comprehending
the elements of a good deal of knowledge.

We must endeavour to show in part how
that is done. The third gift — the cube
divided once in every direction — enables the
child to begin the work of construction in