of arrangements will readily suggest themselves. The main feature
is to have all things natural, free, pleasant, cheerful, bright, refined,
and unrestrained by external forms or rigid rules, at the same time that
order is secured by an easy discipline.

So deeply are we impressed with the importance and utility of the kinder
garten, and with the high qualities required by the teacher of the very
young, that we are more and more disposed to believe that the true order
in rank and promotion among teachers should be, to speak in paradox,
downwards; that is to say, the younger the children to be taught, the
higher the rank and remuneration of the teacher; for not only is an
extensive range of knowledge necessary to enable the teacher truthfully
to answer the innumerable questions of inquisitive infancy, and to avoid
giving false notions, to be afterwards with greater or less difficulty
removed--always with a shock to the moral sentiment when the child
discovers it has been deceived--but also a knowledge of the infant mind, a
perception of the thoughts and fancies which chase one another through the
infant brain, a knowledge and perceptive power which only a watchful and
loving experience can acquire. An industry and a patience far beyond any
needed by the teacher of more advanced pupils are also required by the
highly-cultivated men and women, to whom alone the training of infant
minds should be intrusted. Advanced pupils go more than half-way to meet
their teacher--the infant can render no assistance to his, all has to be
borne, suffered and done for him--his future habits depend mainly on those
given to him in his earliest years. Yet the care of him in these important
days is generally confided to ignorant nurses and to the less-skilled
class of teachers.

In building the school, a pleasing style of architecture should be
adopted, and the walls of the main hall should be hung with diagrams of
all kinds, illustrative of natural history in its largest sense, of the
sciences and of the mechanical arts, and with portraits or busts of
distinguished men. The walls of the class-rooms should be decorated with
diagrams and maps and figures referring to the special branches taught
therein.

A large and commodious laboratory should be fitted up in the building, to
enable every pupil to acquire experimentally that knowledge of chemical
forces and action which books alone can never impart. A convenient
observatory should afford fac