erest. "The art of tuition," says Ardigo,
"consists mainly of this: to know up to what point and in what manner
one can maintain the interest of pupils. The most skilful teachers are
those who never fatigue one fraction of the pupil's brain, but act in
such a manner that his attention, turning now here, now there, may
rest itself and, gaining strength, return to the principal argument of
the discourse with renewed vigor."

A much more laborious art is that which leads the child to find by
means of its own mental processes, not what it would naturally find,
but what the teacher desires, although he does not say what he desires;
he urges on the child to associate his ideas "spontaneously"--as the
teacher associates them--and even succeeds in making the child compose
definitions with the exact words he himself has fixed upon, without
having revealed them. Such a thing would seem the result of some
occult science, a kind of conjuring trick. Nevertheless, such methods
have been and still are in use, and in some cases they form the sole
art of the teacher.

When in 1862 Tolstoy was making his tours of inspection in the schools
of Germany, he was struck by this method of tuition, and among the
pedagogic writings describing his school, Iasnaja Poliana, he
reproduces a lesson which deserves to be recorded, although perhaps it
would no longer be possible to find an example of such a lesson in any
German school.

IASNAJA POLIANA, 1862.

Calm and confident, the professor is seated in the
class-room; the instruments are ready; little tables with the
letters, a book with the picture of a fish. The master looks
at his pupils; he knows beforehand all they are to
understand; he knows of what their souls consist, and various
other things he has learned in the seminary.

He opens the book and shows the fish. "Dear children, what is
this?" The poor children are delighted to see the fish,
unless indeed they already know from other pupils with what
sauce it is to be served up. In any case, they answer: "It is
a fish." "No," replies the professor (all this is not an
invention nor a satire, but an exact account of what I have
seen without exception in all the best schools in Germany,
and in those English schools which have adopted this method
of teaching). "No," says the professor. "Now what is it you
do see?" The children are silent. It m