This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees the danger of yielding to any individual authority more than I do; but it is certain that nothing may make us so narrow, as a bigoted adherence to the rule of following the light of our own mind condignly. The light of our own individual mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a farthing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The question is, do we distinguish between that greater light and our own idiosyncrasy, with a becoming and discriminating humility? I once heard a lady, whose name was Gurley, say to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total depravity of human nature from the experience of her own heart." Ah! but that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how do you know what is human nature and what is Gurleyism?" Here is tersely suggested the danger of the individualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a new kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory in its animus than any other; and which shuts up its votaries in a dungeon from the light of Universal experience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of the philosophy of individualism, as a protest against the glittering generality which theological philosophy had become, at the time when it arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately an eye, and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul, he must look with it out of his own window. But this is only the way to begin to search for truth. If he is not self-intoxicated, every man soon learns that his window does not command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to look out of each others' windows, some being higher up in the tower of the common humanity than our own, commanding wider views; in fine that it is with all the sons of man that "wisdom dwells," and they must inter-communicate with mutual reverence if they would know her well. Froebel had not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will not be wise if you do not look out of Froebel's window.

The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of Froebel's mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the common motherly instinct, purified of individual passion and caprice, and, understanding itself as the presence of the Living God overshadowing her, is the social atmosphere necessary to be breathed by every child who is to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Froebel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, as it were, by lacking it in his own childish experience; and he verified it positively afterwards, by studying the method of unsophisticated mothers, at that earliest period of their children's lives, when, in order to keep them alive merely, the nurse must take the rule of her nursing from the needs which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's own expression of want and content—its tears and smiles.

Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, which is preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.

By the primal miracle (i.e., wonder working) of nature, the mother finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable susceptibility of suffering, and an immeasurable desire of enjoyment, and an equally immeasurable force intent on compassing this desire, already in activity, but with no knowledge at all of the material conditions in which he is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited in the exercise of this immense nature.

As I have said before, every form of animal existence but the human, is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling it to fulfil its limited sphere of relationship as unerringly as the magnetized needle turns to the pole, and, even with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no forethought. But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the human being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily life, exists substantially outside of its own individuality in the mother, or whoever supplies the mother's place.

And throughout the existence of the human being, the forethought that is to enable him to appreciate his ever multiplying relations with his own kind, and which grows wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they involve, is essentially outside of himself as a mere individual; being found first in those who are in relation with him in the family, afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship; till at last he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in whom all humanity, nations, families, individuals, "live and move and have their being." There is no absolute isolation or independency possible for a spiritual being. This is a truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit, and revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact of the child born into the arms of a love that emparadises both parties, on which he lives more or less a pensioner throughout his whole existence, so far as he lives humanly, finding fullness of life at last in the clear vision and conscious communion of an Infinite Father, who has been revealing Himself all along, in the love of parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and fellow-man. Christ said, that little children see the Father face to face, but surely not with the eyes of the body or of the understanding! They see him with the heart. And is it not true, that we never quite forget the child's vision in turning our eyes on lower things? for what but remembrance of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, "that springs eternal in the human breast?" What but this remembrance are the ideals of beauty, that haunt the savage and the sage? the sense of law that gives us our moral dignity, and in the saddest case, what but this are the pangs of remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful sphinx song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest?"

Froebel has authority with me, because, in this great faith, making himself a little child, he received little children in the name (that is, as germinating forms) of the Divine humanity, with a simple sincerity, such as few seem to have done since Jesus claimed little children as the pure elements of the kingdom he came to establish on earth; and exhorted that, as they were such, they should be brought to him as the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they were not to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false education hinders.)

As an American then, and more—as a human being, I acknowledge no authority except the union of love and thought in practical operation. But whenever I see this union in any one, to a greater degree than I have it in myself, I bow before that person, and feel (which is the subtlest kind of knowing) that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective for good, by following and obeying him as a master for the time being.

Therefore, after the study I have made of Froebel, and of the method with little children that he was fifty years discovering and elaborating into practical processes, whose rationale and creative influence I perceive; I feel, as it were, Divinely authorized to present him to you as an authority which you can reverently trust; and so be delivered from the uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions, inexperienced and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however talented.

It is quite necessary for me to say, and for you to accept this now, or our short time together will be wasted. There is a time for criticism undoubtedly, and nothing is true that can not make itself good against "honest doubt." But as Sterne has said, "of all the cants that are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose generous heart will give up the reins into his author's hands, for the time being, and let him lead him where he will." I am quoting from memory, and may forget the exact words; but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering reverence is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a little child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of any one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine Truth.

Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new born child, as Froebel did; for that is to be "the light of all our seeing."

A child is a living soul, from the very first; not a mere animal force, but a person, open to God on one side by his heart, which appreciates love, and on the other side to be opened to nature, by the reaction upon his sensibility of those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis of God's creative wisdom; and which, therefore, gives him a growing understanding, whereby his mere active force shall be elevated into a rational, productive will. For heart and will are, at first, blind to outward things and therefore inefficient, until the understanding shall be developed according to the order of nature.

But during this process of its development, adult wisdom must supply the place of the child's wisdom, which is not, as yet, grown; that is—an educator must point out the way, genially, not peremptorily; for in following the educator's indications, the child must still act in a measure from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not always obey; he will try other paths—perhaps the contrary one—by way of testing whether he has life in himself. But unless he shall go a right way, he will accomplish nothing satisfactory and reproductive; and it is Froebel's idea to give him something to do, within the possible sphere of his affection and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making an experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire, and thereby make him receptive of the guidance of creative law, which is the only true object for the obedience of a spiritual being.

To the new born child, his own body is the whole universe; and the first impression he gets of it seems to come from his need of nutriment. But it is the mother, not the child, that responds to this want, by presenting food to the organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable impression which arouses the soul to intend itself into the organ, which is developed to receive impression more and more perfectly, by the child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a time, whatever uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to remove by the exercise of this organ, through which he has gained his first pleasant impression of objective nature. Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his first means of examining the outward world into which he has been projected by his Creator.

The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child becomes conscious, or through which he receives impressions of personal pleasure and pain; and here it is noticeable, that rhythmical sound seems, from the very first, to give most pleasure; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the nerves, and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to babies, as well as rock them, (which is rhythmical motion,) and this pleasant impression on the ear diverts the child from intending himself exclusively into the organ of tasting. He now stretches himself into his ears, whose powers are developed by gently exercising their function of hearing.

The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see anything more definite than the difference between light and darkness. By and by a salient point of light, it may be the light of a candle, catches and fixes his eye, and gives a distinct visual impression, which is evidently pleasurable, for the child's eye follows the light, showing that the soul intends itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay colors fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color is developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise, which being pleasurable becomes spontaneous.

The whole body is the organ of touch; but as the hands are made convenient for grasping, to which the infant has an instinctive tendency, and the tips of the fingers are especially handy for touching, they become, by the intension of the mind into them, the special organ for examining things by touch, and getting impressions of qualities obvious to no other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by malformation or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends itself into the special organs of touch, developing them to such a degree, that a cultivated blind person seems almost to see with the tips of the fingers. This fact proves what I have been trying to impress on your minds, that the soul which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment, takes possession and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the Creator, and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,) by the genial, sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working of the mother and nurse; who, by what we call nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to accomplish this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall be better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if we consider the case of the neglected children of the very poor, so pathetically described by Charles Lamb. See essays on Popular Fallacies, No. 12.

Madame Marenholtz-BÜlow has happily remarked, in her preface to Jacob's Manual, Le jardin des Enfans, that "to develop and train the senses is not to pamper them." The organs of tasting and smelling do not require so much exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build up the body; the latter to lead the child's mind out of the body, to that part of nature which connects him with other persons. The functions of both are equally worthy; but those of the latter belong to the child as a social and intellectual being. It is the mother's office to temper the exercises of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each other. And in order to limit those which are building up the body, so that they shall not absorb the child, the action of the others must be helped out. "Our bodies feel—where'er they be—against or with our will;" but to see and hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the functions of tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The Creator has made them delightful; and if others do their proper part, their exercise will never become harmful. To enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent than to enjoy seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body but may be performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into this truth by making Raphael sit and eat at table with man in Paradise; and he says some wonderful things upon the point, which will bear much study. And have we not in sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and may transform the body without leaving visible residue? There are in Brown's philosophy (which does not penetrate into all the mysteries of the rational soul and immortal spirit) some very instructive chapters on the social and moral relations of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and touch are sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to understand all these things thoroughly, and adjust the spontaneous activities by subordinating them to the end of a harmonious and beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper may be made to illustrate this general human duty.

There is doubtless marked difference in the original energy of life, in different children. Young—but not too young, happy, healthy, loving parents, have the most vigorous, lively and harmoniously organized children; but in all cases, the impulse of life must be met and cherished by the tender, attractive, inspiring force of motherly love; which with caressing tone and invoking smile, peers into the infant's eyes, and importunately calls forth the new person, who, as her instinctive motherly faith and love assure her, is there; and whom she yearns to make conscious of himself in self-enjoyment. The time comes when the little body has become so far subject to the new soul, that an answering smile of recognition signalizes the arrival upon the shores of mortal being of "that light which never was on sea or land," another immortal intelligence! It is only the smile of the intelligent human face, that can call forth this smile of the child in the first instance; but let this glad mutual recognition of souls take place once, and both parties will seek to repeat the delight, again and again. Few persons, indeed, get so chilled by the sufferings and disappointments, and so hardened by the crimes of human life, but on the sight of a little child, they are impelled to invoke this answering smile by making themselves, for the moment, little children again; seeking and finding that communion with our kind which is the Alpha and Omega of life.

Do not say that I am wandering, fancifully, from the serious work which we are upon: I am only beginning at the beginning. We can only understand the child, and what we are to do for it in the Kindergarten, by understanding the first stage of its being—the pre-intellectual one in the nursery. The body is the first garden in which God plants the human soul, "to dress and to keep it." The loving mother is the first gardener of the human flower. Good nursing is the first word of Froebel's gospel of child-culture.

The process of taking possession of the organs, that I have just described, is never performed perfectly unless children are nursed genially. If bitter and disagreeable things are presented to the organ of the taste, they are rejected with the whole force of a will, which is too blind in its ignorance to find the thing it wants, but vindicates its irrefragable freedom of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain and anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward into nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are paralyzed, or at least rendered morbid, especially when rude untender handling outrages the sense of touch. When rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or too sharply salient a light, the eye, these organs will be injured, and may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and maltreated child is dull of sense, and lifeless, or morbidly impulsive, possibly savagely cruel and cunning, in sheer self-defence. The pure element and first condition of perfect growth, is the joy that responds to the electric touch of love.

Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate development of the organs of the five senses, is the whole body's instinct of motion, which is the primal action of will. The perfectly healthy body of a little child, when it is awake, is always in motion—more or less intentionally. When asleep, there is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the solids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing, which is involuntary; and any interruption of these produces disease—their suspension, death. But the motion which makes the limbs agile, and the whole body elastic, and gradually to become an obedient servant, is voluntary, intentional, and can be helped by that sympathetic action of others, which we call playing with the child. Froebel's rich suggestions on this play are contained in his mother's cossetting songs; and I am glad to tell you that two English ladies, a poet and a musician, have translated and set to music this unique book; and that just now it has been published by Wilkie, Wood & Co., in London. It suggests all kinds of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet, toes and legs, for these are the child's first play things; and also the first symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and significance to all languages.[1]

I think that a baby never begins to play, in the first instance, but responds to the mother and nurse's play, and learns thereby its various members and their powers and uses; and when at last it jumps, runs, walks by itself, which it cannot begin to do without the help of others, it is prepared to say I, with a clear sense of individuality.

In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we see most clearly the characteristic difference between the human person and the animals below man in the scale of relation. The little chicken runs about of itself, as soon as it is out of the shell; but the human child, even after all its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving himself on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting himself by means of the furniture to which he clings, does not walk. He will only stand alone, unsupported, when he sees that there are guarding arms round about him, all ready to catch him if he should fall. He seems to know instinctively, that all the force of the earth's gravitation is against him. He does not know that he may balance it by his personal power. His body weighs upon his soul like a mountain, precisely because he is intelligent of it as an object, loves it as a means of pleasure, and dreads its power of giving pain to him. The little darling stands, perhaps between the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him; the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls him to her embrace; the way is short between, and three steps will be sufficient, but where is the courageous faith to say to this mountain of a body, "be removed to another place?" It is not in himself; he cannot produce it any more than he can take himself up by his own ears. It is in the mother; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the yet unexerted power which is flowing into the child from the Creator. Only by the electric touch of her faith in him does his faith in himself flash out in answer to her look and voice of cheer, and he rushes to her arms. It is the doing of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge of the power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seeming to wish to be more and more certain of his being the cause of so great effect. Thus cause and effect are discriminated, and "to him that hath" a sense of individuality, "shall be given," forevermore, a growing power over the body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the vulgar plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power over his body seems, sometimes, to be absolute and miraculous. But the annals of heroism and martyrdom are full of facts that go to prove to all who consider them profoundly, that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by recognizing all its relations, it subjects the individual to the universal, and becomes thereby entirely spiritual, (which is man reciprocating with God; becoming more and more conscious forever.[2])

From what has been said of the soul's taking possession of the body and its several organs, by exercising the functions of tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, grasping, moving the limbs, and at last taking up the whole body into itself in the act of walking, we see that it is all done, even the last, by virtue of the social nature.

Froebel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and never let it go, and it is of the greatest importance that it be understood clearly, that conscious individuality, which gives the sense of free personality, the starting point, as it were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent with and even dependent on the simultaneous development of the social principle in all its purity and power.

We see a sad negative proof of this, in asylums for infants abandoned by their mothers, or given up by them through stress of poverty. There is one of these in New York city, into which are received poor little things in the first weeks of their existence. Every thing is done for their bodily comfort which the general human kindness can devise. They have clean warm cradles and clothes, good milk, in short everything but that caressing motherly play, which goes from the personal heart to the personal heart. That is one thing general charity cannot supply; it is the personal gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she can be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly it is, that almost all new-born children in foundling hospitals die; or, if they survive, are found to be feeble-minded or idiotic. They seem to sink into their animal natures, and belie the legend man written on their brows, showing none of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous affectionateness that characterise the heartily welcomed, healthy, well-cared-for human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apathy, morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self-defence, anticipative of other forms of the cruel neglect which has been their dreary experience.

Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together with the bitter experiences of his own childhood, Froebel supplied to the mother or nurse some playthings for the baby, which might continue to improve the various organs of its body, by making the exercise of their functions a social delight.

What is called the first gift, he proposes should be used in the nursery first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large to be grasped by a little hand, and the use of which in the nursery, is suggested by a little first book for mothers, that has been translated from Jacob's Le jardin des Enfans.[3] I think it is important for the Kindergartner to know what Froebel thought could be done for the development of the infant in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she must contrive to remedy the evil in the Kindergarten. You will bear with me, therefore, if I go quite into the minutiÆ of this matter. It will open your eyes to observe delicately, as Froebel did.

He proposed that the red ball should be first presented. He had observed that a bright light concentrated, as in a candle, first excited the organ of sight and stimulated its action. Hence he inferred that a bright color would do the same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all probably. The red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light of a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer, without producing a painful re-action. The child will have a pleasure in grasping it, and will probably carry it to his lips; but as it is woolen, it will not be especially agreeable to the delicate organ of taste. It will all the more be looked at therefore, and give the impression of red. Froebel proposes that it shall be called the red ball, in order that the impression of the word red on the ear, shall blend in memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As long as the child seems amused with the red ball, he would not have another color introduced, because he thought it took time for the eye to get a clear and strong impression of one color, and this should be done before it was tried with a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball, as the greatest contrast, may be given and named; and all the little plays suggested in the mother's book be repeated with the blue ball; and then the yellow ball should be given with its name; and then the three be given together, and the baby be asked to choose the blue, or red, or yellow one. By attaching a string to them, and whirling them, or letting the infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse itself with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give, especially when combined with motion.

The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the treasury for the eye, with the same carefulness to secure completeness and distinctness of impression; and to associate the color with the word that names it; for language, the special organ of social communion, should be addressed to the child from the first, though its complete attainment and use is the crown of all education.

Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the first languages, and begin to fix the little child's eyes and attention upon the mouth of the mother, from which issue the tones that are sweetest to hear, and especially when in musical cadence. But the child understands the words addressed to him long before he himself begins to articulate; for language is no function of the individual, but only of the consciously social being, yearning to find himself in another.

There is a reciprocal communication between infants and adults that precedes the difficult act of articulation. This we call the natural language, and it is common to all nations, being mutually intelligible, as is proved by deaf mutes from remote countries who understand each other at once. But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart, but does not serve the fine purposes of intellectual communication, nor minister any considerable intellectual development. These signs are very general, while every word in its origin has represented a particular object in nature. In analyzing any language, we find that the names given to the body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life, without which no human society can exist, are the nucleus or central words that characterize it, and from which the whole national rhetoric is derived. Hence there is a value for the mind in associating the words and action of even such a little play as "here we go up, up, up, and here we go down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards, and here we go round, round, round," with other rhymes and plays of an analogous character that are found wherever there are mothers and children.

We have observed that the moment of first accomplishing the feat of running alone, seemed to be that of the child's beginning to realize himself to be a person, but that even, in this act, he was dependent upon his mother; that his bodily independence was the gift of her faith in that within him, which is essentially superior to the body and can command it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality is, more and more, a delight to the child, in which his mother sympathises; and by this sympathy aids him. All his plays involve exercise of the power of commanding his body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place, his desire to exercise power on nature outside of himself increases, and he is prompted to measure strength with other children. If children were mere individuals they would merely quarrel, as Hobbes says; but being social beings also, they tend to unite forces and aid one another to compass desired ends. By so doing, they rise to a greater sense of life, and brotherly love is evolved. But in the development of the social life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in, to keep both parties steady to some object outside of themselves, which it takes their union to reach. Children can be taught to play together, by engaging their powers of imitation, and addressing their fancy. Every mother knows, that in the first opening of children's social life, their bodily energies are stimulated to such a degree, that it is quite as much as she or one nurse can do, to tend two or three children together; and by the time they are three years old, the family nursery becomes too narrow a sphere for them. It is then that they are to be received into a Kindergarten, whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a little, by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contemplated; and because social action must be orderly and rhythmical, in order to be agreeable. This, a properly prepared Kindergartner knows, and by her sympathetic influence and power over the childish imagination, she will bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the conscious understanding, beginning with this rhythmical one at the center.

The movement plays which Froebel invented, express, in dramatic form, some simple fact of nature or some childish fancy, for which he gives, as accompaniment, a descriptive song set to a simple melody. The children learn both to recite and to sing the words of the song, and then the movements of the play. To them the whole reason for the play seems to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that it serves higher ends, and that it is at least always a lesson in order, enabling them to begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's first law."

Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays, to the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing the sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is swallowed up in social joy.

When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, to those Kindergartens, which were taught by Froebel's own pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of Froebel's own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form by simple rhymes. The children sometimes personated machinery, sometimes great natural movements. In one instance I saw the solar system performed by a company of children that had been in the Kindergarten four years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere movement is in itself so delightful and salutary for children that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration.

My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E. Steiger, of New York, contains some of the principal plays, set to Froebel's own music. I would gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.

But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is aimed at in the Kindergarten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline, exercising the children to act to the end of making others happy, rather than of merely enjoying themselves. If the individual enjoyment is not a social enjoyment, it is disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by merely enjoying, whenever his enjoyment is social. I am of course speaking of that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet undeveloped to the comprehension of humanity as a whole; when the good, the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, reverence or trust. The words good, beautiful, kind, true, get their meaning for children by their intercourse with such persons. Specific knowledge of God cannot be opened up in them by any words, unless these words have first got their meaning by being associated with human beings who bear traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections. To liken God's love to the mother's love, brings home a conception of it to children, for hers they realize every day.

The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First Gift of Froebel's series, being used in both. The nursery use will have taught the names of the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and made it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the child has had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart's content—not tormented with any sense of the—at his age—artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper development of the mental powers.

In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such position as to catch its reflex motion. The children must learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards to each other. When standing in a circle, the balls may be made to circulate with rapidity, passing from hand to hand, the children singing the accompanying song.

"Who'll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them in counting. And all these movement plays with the ball are admirable for exercising the body, giving it agility, grace of movement, precision of eye and touch. These things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and no constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for children's learning to adjust themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play possible. All children in playing together learn justice and social graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their sport is spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner, in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness and quarreling. A Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, and who is herself a good play-fellow, will magnetize the children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a company of children are generally of such variety of temperament and different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come from such inadequate nursery life, that the regulating Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she will find a word is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary to bring all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to pronounce upon the fairness of what some one is doing. I would suggest that the question be asked not of the class, but of the individual culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child, with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager to confess and reform, because the moral sense is quite as strong as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the presence of others. It is not worth while to make too much of little faults, and the first indication of turning to the right must be accepted; the child is grateful for being believed in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.

Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls are most purely playthings; and there are none of the plays so liable to be riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest difficulty in keeping children from being too noisy, and it is not wise to make too much of a point of it. The ball seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for them to get good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable limits. The Kindergartner, in conversation before hand, should make them see that they may get too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily induce them to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole minute, as may be agreed upon. This can be made a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this way, will give them some conception of the length of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant variety.

The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated, in the Kindergarten, with conversations upon the ball, naming the colors, telling which are primary, which secondary, and illustrating the difference by giving them pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and yellow, and letting them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors. Ask them, afterwards, to tell what colors make orange, or purple, or green; and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange, or the green and purple.

One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First Gift may be sewing with the colored threads on the cards; and the colors may be arranged so as to illustrate the connections, &c., just learned. The use of the First Gift need only be once a week. It will then be a fresh pleasure every time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if it should last three years. After the children have become perfectly familiar with the primary and secondary colors, their combinations and connections, the lessons on colors may be varied, by telling them that tints of the primary colors and of the secondary colors, are made by adding white to them; and shades of them, (which will, of course, be darker,) by adding black to them. This may be illustrated by flowers, as may various combinations of colors. A very little child, whom it was hard to train even to the hilarious and gay plays, and whose attention could not easily be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude in detecting what color had been mixed with red to make a very glorious pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very impatient of putting his needle into any special holes. It proved to be the pleasure of handling the colored yarns, and he was always eager to change them and form new combinations. It may not be irrelevant to say here, in regard to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that the ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with children.

The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible. Children learn practically, by means of it, the laws of motion. Beware of any strictly scientific teaching of these laws in terms. You may make children familiar with the phenomena of the laws of incidence and reflection, by simply telling them that if they strike the ball straight against the wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in a slanting direction. By and by this knowledge can be used to give meaning to a scientific expression. It is a first principle that the object, motion, or action, should precede the word that names them. This is Froebel's uniform method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study does come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere superficial talk. It is the laws of things that are the laws of thought; and thought must precede all attempt at logic, or logic will be deceptive, not reasonable. Most erroneous speculation has its roots in mistakes about words, which it is fatal to divorce from what they express of nature, or to use without taking in their full meaning.

In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of childhood, impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator to have all the child's notions associated with significant words, as can only be done by his becoming their companion in the play, and talking about it, as children always incline to do. It is half the pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing. In the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her dealings with it, are expressed in words that are important lessons in language; and together with language, we give a lesson in manners, by first trotting a child gently, and then jouncingly, to the words, "This is the way the gentle folks go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this is the way the country folks go, this is the way the country folks go—bouncing and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what they are doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it a mental as well as physical play of faculty, and Froebel published a hundred little rhymes, and the music for as many ball plays.

It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that the same things seem different in different circumstances. The fact that white light is composed of different colored rays can be illustrated by giving the children prisms to hold up in the sunshine; and by calling their attention to the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of the Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the beautiful phenomenon, they will not be likely to ask questions as to how the light is separated by the prism and clouds; they will rest in the fact. But if, by chance, analytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian-wise, to which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles, can be given them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly. This will present the phenomenon of the merging of the colors to the eye by motion, so that the ball looks whitish from which you can proceed to speak of light as being composed of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the rainbow, in motion, and so looking white.

If some uncommon little investigator should persist to ask why things seem to be other than they are, he must be plainly told, that the reason is in something about his eyes, which he cannot understand now, but will learn by and by, when he goes to school and learns optics.

Children are only to be entertained in the Kindergarten, with the facts of nature that develop the organs of perception, but a skillful teacher who reads Tyndall's charming books and the photographic journals, may bring into the later years of the Kindergarten period many pretty phenomena of light and colors, which shall increase the stock of facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed, may work, or which the future painter may make use of in his art.

When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose background was the sun, he thought out carefully the means of producing the dazzling effect, and drew lines of all the rainbow colors in their order, side by side, after having put on his canvass a ground of the three primary colors mixed. When the picture was first exhibited at Somerset House, the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord Egremont, in a transport of delight; and for twice the sum the artist put upon it, that is, six hundred guineas. I do not know whether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, is a great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science deliberately, according to the artist's confession. But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its combinations, were the basis of both the science and the art.

This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, that the First Gift has, for its most important office, to develop the organ of sight, which grows by seeing. Colors arouse intentional seeing by the delightful impression they make. I believe that color-blindness, (which our army examinations have proved to be as common as want of ear for music,) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ of sight in a systematic way; just as ear for music may be developed in those who are not born with it. Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by beginning gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so agreeable to them as to arouse their will to try to hear, in order to reproduce.

That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of the fact, that the organs of perception actually grow by exercise with intention, I will relate to you a fact that came under my own observation.

A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz, who gave him, among his first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very powerful microscope, asking him to find out and tell all their differences. At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope, all the time that he dared to use his eyes, for a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that "it was the best month's work he ever did, to form the scientific eye which could detect differences ever after, at a glance," and proved to him an invaluable talent, and gave him exceptional authority with scientists.