ll be allowed to stop when they can play a simple piece of music at
sight correctly, and when they have learnt the simple rules of harmony.

For teaching them geography, I have a simple plan; my own early
geography lessons were to my recollection singularly dismal. I used, as
far as I can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers, capes, and
mountains. Then there were horrible lists of exports and imports, such
as hides, jute, and hardware. I did not know what any of the things
were, and no one explained them to me. What we do now is this. I read
up a book of travels, and then we travel in a country by means of
atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape we should see, the
inhabitants, their occupations, their religion, and show the children
pictures. I can only say that it seems to be a success. They learn
arithmetic with their governess, and what is aimed at is rapid and
accurate calculations. As for religious instruction, we read portions
of the Bible, striking scenes and stories, carefully selected, and the
Gospel story, with plenty of pictures. But here I own I find a
difficulty. With regard to the Old Testament, I have frankly told them
that many of the stories are legends and exaggerations, like the
legends of other nations. That is not difficult; I say that in old days
when people did not understand science, many things seemed possible
which we know now to be impossible; and that things which happened
naturally, were often thought to have happened supernaturally;
moreover, that both imagination and exaggeration crept in about famous
people. I am sure that there is a great danger in teaching intelligent
children that the Bible is all literally true. And then the difficulty
comes in, that they ask artlessly whether such a story as the miracle
of Cana, or the feeding of the five thousand, is true. I reply frankly
that we cannot be sure; that the people who wrote it down believed it
to be true, but that it came to them by hearsay; and the children seem
to have no difficulty about the matter. Then, too, I do not want them
to be too familiar, as children, with the words of Christ, because I am
sure that it is a fact that, for many people, a mechanical familiarity
with the Gospel language simply blurs and weakens the marvellous
significance and beauty of the thought. It becomes so crystallised that
they cannot penetrate it. I have treated some parts of the Gospel after
the fashion of Philochristus, telling them a st