When a very young man I was favored with an introduction to Michael Faraday, and had the privilege of attending a portion of a course of lectures which this noble man was then in the habit of giving every Christmas season to a juvenile auditory at the Royal Institution of London. As a boy, I had become familiar with lectures on chemistry at the Lowell Institute, where they did not lack the pomp of circumstance or the display of apparatus, and I had come to associate these elements with the conditions of success in lectures of this kind. What, then, was my surprise to find Faraday, the acknowledged leader of the world in his science, and who had every means of illustration at his command, using the plainest language and the simplest tools. When, in my youthful admiration at the result, I expressed, after one of the lectures, my surprise at the simplicity of the means employed, the great master replied: "That is the whole secret of interesting these young people. I always use the simplest means, but I never leave a point not illustrated. If I mention the force of gravitation I take up a stone and let it drop." At this distance of time, I can not be sure that I quote his exact language, but the lesson and the illustration I could not forget; and to this lesson, more than to any other one thing, I owe whatever success I have had as a teacher of physical science. I repeat, therefore, it is not only useless but injurious in the education of young minds to present any department of physical science as a body of definitions, principles, laws, or theories; and that in elementary schools such facts only should be taught as can be verified either by the experience of the pupils or by the simplest experiments, which the pupils can repeat by themselves; and now, after this discussion, I add, that the teacher must depend on his own ingenuity for his experiments, and on his intercourse with his pupils for his instruction. But you will tell me all this involves grave difficulties, and conditions incompatible with our ordinary school life. I freely admit the difficulties, but I am none the less sure that, unless science can be taught on the principles I have endeavored to illustrate, it had better not be taught at all. I know very well that the proper teaching of physical science is wholly incompatible with our usual school methods. But this only proves to me that these methods ought to be changed, and I am persuaded that the changes required will benefit the literary and classical as well as the scientific courses of study. For do not the same general principles apply to the acquisition of knowledge in all subjects? And when a child's perceptive faculties have been duly stimulated, and his intelligence fully awakened, he will find interest in grammar, in literature, or in history, as well as in science.