accordance with its own ideas, and insensibly
brings the ideas into the control of a sense of
harmony and fitness. The cube divided into
eight parts will manufacture many things;
and, while the child is at work helped by
quiet suggestion now and then, the teacher
talks of what he is about, asks many
questions, answers more, mixes up little songs
and stories with the play. Pillars, ruined
castles, triumphal arches, city gates, bridges,
crosses, towers, all can be completed to the
perfect satisfaction of a child, with the eight
little cubes. They are all so many texts
on which useful and pleasant talk can be
established. Then they are capable also of
harmonious arrangement into patterns, and
this is a great pleasure to the child. He
learns the charm of symmetry, exercises taste
in the preference of this or that among the
hundred combinations of which his eight
cubes are susceptible.

Then follows the " fourth gift," a cube
divided into eight planes cut lengthways.
More things can be done with this than with
the other. Without strain on the mind,
in sheer play, mingled with songs, nothing is
wanted but a liberal supply of little cubes, to
make clear to the children the elements of
arithmetic. The cubes are the things
numbered. Addition is done with them; they are
subtracted from each other; they are
multiplied; they are divided. Besides these four
elementary rules they cause children to be
thoroughly at home in the principle of
fractions, to multiply and divide fractions—as
real things; all in good time, it will become
easy enough to let written figures represent
them—to go through the rule of three,
square root, and cube root. As a child has
instilled into him the principles of arithmetic,
so he acquires insensibly the groundwork of
geometry, the sister science.

Froebel's " fifth gift " is an extension of the
third, a cube divided into twenty-seven equal
cubes, and three of these further divided into
.halves, three into quarters. This brings with
it the teaching of a great deal of geometry,
much help to the lessons in number, magnificent accessions to the power of the little
architect; who is provided, now, with pointed
roofs and other glories, and the means of
producing an almost infinite variety of
symmetrical patterns, both more complex and more
beautiful than heretofore.

The " sixth gift " is a cube so divided as to
extend still farther the child's power of
combining and discussing it. When its resources
are exhausted and combined with those of the
"seventh gift " (a box containing every form
supplied in the preceding series), the little
pupil seven years old has had his inventive
and artistic powers exercised, and his mind
stored with facts that have been absolutely
comprehended. He has acquired also a sense
of pleasure in the occupation of his mind.

But he has not been trained in this
way only. We leave out of account the
bodily exercise connected with the entire round
of occupation, and speak only of the mental
discipline. There are some other " gifts "
that are brought into service as the child
becomes able to use them. One is a box
containing pieces of wood, or pasteboard, cut
into sundry forms. With these the letters
of the alphabet can be constructed: and, after
letters, words, in such a way as to create out
of the game a series of pleasant spelling
lessons. The letters are arranged upon a
slate ruled into little squares, by which
the eye is guided in preserving regularity.
Then follows the gift of a bundle of small
sticks, which represent so many straight
lines; and, by laying them upon his slate,
the child can make letters, patterns,
pictures; drawing, in fact, with lines that
have not to be made with pen or pencil, but
are provided ready made and laid down with
the fingers. This kind of Stick-work having
been brought to perfection, there is a capital
extension of the idea with what is called
Pea-work. By the help of peas softened in
water, sticks may be joined together, letters,
skeletons of cubes, crosses, prisms may be
built; houses, towers, churches may be
constructed, having due breadth as well as
length and height, strong enough to be
carried about or kept as specimens of ingenuity.
Then follows a gift of flat sticks, to be used
in plaiting. After that, there is a world of
ingenuity to be expended on the plaiting,
folding, cutting, and pricking of plain or
coloured paper. Children five years old,
trained in the Infant Garden, will delight in
plaiting slips of paper variously coloured into
patterns of their own invention, and will
work with a sense of symmetry so much
refined by training as to produce patterns of
exceeding beauty. By cutting paper, too.
patterns are produced in the Infant Garden
that would often, though the work of very
little hands, be received in schools of design
with acclamation. Then there are games by
which the first truths of astronomy, and
other laws of nature, are made as familiar as
they are interesting. For our own parts, we
have been perfectly amazed at the work we
have seen done by children of six or seven—
bright, merry creatures, who have all the
spirit of their childhood active in them,
repressed by no parent's selfish love of ease
and silence— cowed by no dull-witted teacher
of the ABC and the pot-hooks.

Froebel discourages the cramping of an
infant's hand upon a pen, but his slate ruled
into little squares, or paper prepared in the
same way, is used by him for easy training in
the elements of drawing. Modelling in wet
clay is one of the most important occupations
of the children who have reached about the
sixth year, and is used as much as possible,
not merely to encourage imitation, but to
give some play to the creative power.
Finally, there is the best possible use made of
the paint-box, and children engaged upon the