The great popularity of the kindergarten is due in large measure to the fact that it relieves mothers during part of the day of the care of their small children. That it does this in very many cases at the expense of weakening the tie between mother and child there is too much reason to fear. The State has been stepping in more and more between parents and children, until now it lays its hand almost upon the cradle. The mothers of the republic are giving way, so far as influence over the rising generation is concerned, to the schoolmarms; but it is idle to expect that the latter can take the place of the mothers we used to know. The kindergarten constitutes a vast extension of the educational machinery previously in operation, and machinery is always impressive, especially to those who do not understand it. What people see is that the system works very smoothly and uniformly and rhythmically, and that it saves, or seems to save, them a great deal of trouble; and that it is enough to make them think it something very fine. Whether it is really saving trouble in the end is a question which we consider quite open to discussion. There is room, in our opinion, to inquire whether the stimulus of society is not too early and too systematically brought to bear on the infants who throng the educational nursery--whether it is well for children of three and four to be brought every day under the eye of, and more or less into competition with, a large number of companions of their own age. We doubt much whether it tends to simplicity of character, and we can not but regard it as distinctly unfavorable to the development of individuality. The rule of fashion begins at once to operate with great intensity, and the child loses the power of conceiving life except in the herd. As to whether trouble on the whole is being saved to parents by the new system, the question could best be answered by ascertaining whether, in the long run, parents have more or less trouble with their children now than formerly. We should be surprised to hear any one maintaining that they had less.