the coarse footsteps of human reasoning. Only by those who feel most keenly the awe that enfolds the portals of life as of death, can as much as this be said.

As the infant further grows under the eyes of vigilant parental love, there comes a time when it is sensibly affected by impressions on its eyes. It is attracted by the glittering of coins, by the blaze of artificial lights, by vivid spots of contrasted colors. Its little hands, naturally half closed by the greater strength of their palmar muscles, are stretched out to grasp the attractive spot, and to convey it to the infant's earliest measure of excellence, its mouth. Yet it is impossible to say how much earlier than we can apprehend the now visible impression began. Perhaps the color, smoothness, and roundness of its mother's breast begin for each infant the education of its tactile and visual faculties. Whatever defect it may show in appreciating the difference between surfaces and solids by the eyes, is speedily supplied by the natural palmward curve of its hands. Then, by sweet gradations of sensory increase, it comes to know its mother, and to sound, before it can articulate, its delighted vocal welcome of her presence and her voice.

Next to be observed, and particularly about an infant whose auditory cells have been early developed by the mellow sweetness of nursery songs, is how soon it begins to remember the very lengths and intervals of tone in familiar songs, so that, before it can pronounce their words, it can fairly well babble their melody. Indeed, taiking is not more than begun before the baby can walk and run about with surprising agility. In the same way very young children can be taught to discriminate between the six common colors of the spectrum, and between several different shades or intensities of each; to sing at least one major fifth in music, from low to high note and vice versa; to notice minutely the differences of surface smoothness between a great many substances; and even to estimate with some accuracy the relative weight of different quantities or bulks of the same substance; the characteristics of regular shapes, both in surfaces and solids, etc. Even without any particular supervision, most children acquire the greater part of this knowledge for themselves while engaged in what we customarily call their "play."

All these and other distinctions and differences, as also many simple methods of producing them in materials of various kinds, are taught most beautifully, though not, as I think, in all respects perfectly, in the kindergarten, Froebel's delightful systemization of the ideal and substantial nurture of childhood, and in several imitations of his work, such as the kitchen garden of Miss Emily Huntington; but there is no insuperable, or even serious, difficulty to be encountered by any mother or children's nurse who possesses the practical aptness common to most women, in making every house a kindergarten of the very best and most effectual sort. To Froebel's method, and to all kinds of child nurture, I would add very early and gently continuous teaching and practice of

several sanatory habits; among these I here mention only the most commendable habit of closing the mouth when not used in speaking or singing, so that all respiration when in a state of repose should be through the nose. Not only is this habit, once acquired so as to be automatic, extremely efficacious in obviating or rapidly ameliorating all sorts of nasal catarrh, but the consequent and simultaneous benefit to the teeth, to the expression of the whole face, and to the beauty of the lips, cheeks, and chin, is so great as to be seen at once when comparing children who do it with those who do not. In all training of the voice, whether for speech or song, it is of added value, because it also cures or prevents the distressing nasal timbre by which American voices are so generally and so unpleasantly affected. Parents and teachers of young children should be particularly careful in this respect, so that they may convey and develop this habit in all to whom, in voice as in other things, they are, of necessity, constant examples for imitation.

Let us leave the little child at the point when it is to begin going to school, and examine what Song, as a part of Culture, does or can do for men and women. Its great attractions to young adults have been recited by hundreds of authors in every variety of literary form. In private family life, in society, in church services, on all public occasions, Song and Music are used almost instinctively for refreshment and variety's sake, if not for higher or lower motives. A grown person must be single as to civic condition, and a very strict recluse as to life, who would escape from its quantity or quality. Every important town and every city, crowded with fiercely active workers during the day, resounds every evening with concerts, oratorios, operas, and piano playing along miles of private dwellings. Theaters, opera-houses, concert

rooms, music-halls, cafés chantants, all are crowded with listeners; the performance of a new opera, the advent of a new vocalist, or the return of a former favorite, form topics of conversation in all polite society. The attractive sacred or semi-sacred music performed at a church is a commonly given reason for its crowded pews. A person indifferent to music (there are some of this kind in every gathering of humanity) cannot but observe, in spite of himself, how much and how exalted delight in music is felt by the most influential men and the most charming women of his acquaintance. Every picnic, every rowing or sailing excursion, all summer resorts at spas, among the hills, or at the seaside, resound with music and singing. Everywhere, at all times, the adult unfamiliar with music is out of tune with everybody around him. The rustic visitor to a city cannot for his life help despising himself as an ignoramus, or the most cultivated people he happens to meet as enthusiastic fools, if he wanders into the building where some opera or concert of classical music is going on amidst the applause of a large, richlyclad, and interested audience. If unacquainted with vocal music, in addition to his ignorance of social and artistic custom, he will almost surely believe that the singers are swindlers and the audience a collec

tion of idiots. Though not an old man, as years ago, I remember the enormous success of a book (contemporaneous with "The Lamplighter") which had for its motif the flail-like wisdom of an illiterate farmer dealing out judgment without grammar upon the winter amusements of a large city, New York, I believe. This farrago gave me my earliest glimpse of the "Philistinism" which Mr. Matthew Arnold so loves to adorn with its appropriate vulgarities.

The uncultivated newsboys, small salesmen, unmarried artisans, and similar masculine flotsam and jetsam of city life, quite as Philistine in their own way, insist for all that upon getting music suited to their cruder ideas and less developed morals. Every city in this country has some place of amusement, where their craving for music and manners of a "free and easy" kind can be appeased. Here you shall see ⚫ an orchestra composed of men whose bad habits, and of big boys whose want of skill, prevent them from obtaining engagements in more re spectable companies; here are the raucous voices, the brazen faces, the noisy agility, and hideous exaggerations that mark the "song-anddance" couples impersonating dandified Irish peasants or German rustics, the imitation "nigger minstrels," the "character sketch-men," the "talented vocalists," the "unrivaled female jig-dancers," the "only peerless" infant prodigies, the ventriloquists, and the other "attrac tions" for the half-grown and adult children of the street. Here, as with the bucolic visitor, we find that lack of knowledge and want of taste prevent these people from enjoying good music and comely art; but we see, quite as plainly, that this audience prefers this vapid and worthless succession of barbarisms; here is glaring light, plenty of warmth, a sufficient seat, a great superficial "variety" of "entertainment," admin. istered with intense promptness in five-minute doses; for the working child of the street will fall asleep if anything lags or lasts too long.

Here are two kinds of Culture in music, each chosen by its admirers and training its applauders to further progress upward, or downward, as the case may be. The kind first described is that chosen by men and women of good taste or good moral fiber, sometimes inherent but usually developed, and trained by good Teaching during childhood and youth. Its tendency in general is to preserve and continue the blameless delights of childhood and the most refreshing part of youth's hours of pupilage. The other is just what ignorant men and neglected boys, prematurely forced into self-support and self-guidance, will select for their own solace; it is a noxious illustration of the rule of demand and supply; the habitual frequenters need not wash or dress for the occasion; indeed they are too tired or too poor to do anything that will add to their exertions or deplete too much their slender purses; they weary of anything that requires steady attention, because some of them have been under as much restraint as they can endure while working at their trades, and others of them have never been taught, and are, therefore,

incapable of, steady attention to anything; they are ignorant of history, mythology, and languages; unfamiliar with former costumes, arms, furniture, and utensils to such an extent that it would not surprise them much to see Joan of Arc lay off her armor and sit down to a modern piano-forte; and they are so completely indifferent to the claims and influences of the Christian faith, that they never enter a church if they can avoid it. Therefore, partly with their consent, and partly because of their stupid inertia, the entertainment in their places of resort is spiced with bits of worm-eaten coarseness and scraps of contemporary impurity. Heaven help the poor creatures whose house of Music is a "concert-saloon," whose ideals of literature and of art are the comments and the wood-cuts of a "Police Gazette."

To me, I confess, the hiatus in the education of such persons as has been described just now appears to be unnatural, unwise, and unsound. Shall we, when we send little children to school, and so begin their Teaching, put a stop to all the sweet influences under which they have been nurtured? Shall the weary weeks, months, and years, which they spend over their reading, writing, ciphering, and other studies, be lightened by no refreshment? Is there nothing to teach but a child's mind? nothing to provide for but its brain? Do we think that there is no more natural way of learning morals than by the receipt and repetition of moral precepts? Do we believe that we can neglect and pervert the method of Nature in our teaching of good and useful things to the child, thereby preventing the use of that method by the child itself for other purposes? Let us not be deceived. We cannot prevent the natural method of Teaching and Learning from going on all the time, any more than we can prevent an infected child from having the measles. But if the school does not use the natural method in convey. ing the right sort of instruction, everything outside of the school will combine to convey the wrong kind of instruction. Make the school a place of delight as well as of study, and you will keep your scholar in the straight path leading between the Nurture of happy childhood and the Culture of serene manhood and womanhood.

This natural method, it seems to me, should consist, for younger children, in short periods of lively instruction by the teacher, interspersed with short periods of lively doing by the pupils. They begin to talk by trying to imitate what they hear; they begin to do by trying to im itate what they see done; they begin to count, add, and subtract just as soon as you can show them how to do it, but for them the "how" must be a material demonstration before it can be an easy mental act. They catch a simple tune and the simple words that accompany it in

1 “As preliminary to the exercise of the voice in singing-and it applies to the reading as well—the young children are trained in the following points: 1. A proper position of the body. 2. The right management of the bread h. 3. A good quality of utterance, as just mentioned. 4. The correct sound of he vowels. 5. A good articulation. 6. Intelligent expression."-Dr. J. Baxter Uphem.

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an exceedingly short time. Frequent singing, now with a march, now in time with some calisthenic exercise, is therefore indispensable in the natural method of the most elementary instruction, and only a few other things should be taught with it. These should be what Nature also indicates. Some of these are, graceful and accurate motion of the limbs and use of the body; the acquirement of pure tone in both speaking and singing, and whether speaking loudly or softly;1 training of the eyes and fingers in the very beginning by drawing lessons on the blackboard, such as making upright, inclined, and horizontal straight lines, etc.; training of the taste by the example and gradual inducement of the teacher to think about, understand, and talk correctly about what they sing, or draw, or the words and things they have worked upon during the day. The teacher, if inexperienced, will find that young children dislike variations in the verses or tunes they have learned; that they are great sticklers for the word or sound they have learned as the right one for its place; that they reason faultlessly as far as their experience and knowledge allow; but that they require "variety of subjects" for their full interest.

In subsequent grades, the art-passion-that for doing something— should be kept active by further participation in singing and draw. ing, as well as by using materials or models whenever they can be applied to the subjects of study. But as the months and years go by, longer periods for each kind of exercise may be required of them; the

"The first attempt of the teacher is to gain the attention of the children by singing to them some melodic phrase within the range adapted to their voices, and asking them to repeat it after him-to imitate the sounds he has given them, in their proper order. This, after a few trials, the majority of the class will do. Some ten or fifteen minutes are spent in this way, and they have taken their first lesson in music. It is purely a matter of rote singing, of the easiest and simplest kind. The interest of the children is excited, their attention aroused, their appreciation of musical sounds for the first time perhaps awakened. A few lessons are given in this way at the outset.

"But true rote singing, as Mr. Mason has happily expressed it, is a very different thing from the ordinary, "hap-hazard" singing we too often find in our Sunday schools, and in common schools where no regular instruction is given.' It is an appeal to the imitative faculty, which young children possess in so great a degree of perfection; and hence the greatest care should be taken that the example be a proper model for imitation as regards method, and style, and purity, and correctness of tone, even in the utterance of the simplest musical phrase. These preliminary rote lessons should therefore be given, when possible, by the professional teacher himself, and they must needs be few and not long continued.”—Dr. J. Baxter Upham.

"Care, too, is to be taken in the singing exercises of young children, that a too great compass be not attempted. The child is allowed to sing only in the middle register, or where he takes the tones with the least effort. Commencing our instruction with the rote-singing, as already stated, the first five sounds of the G scale are only attempted at the outset. Even within this limited range many of the best juvenile songs may be found. After the voice has been well practiced in this compass, it may be extended upward and downward to a judicious extent, taking care not to strain the voice in the least degree,”—Dr. J. Baxter Upham,