alone in questioning the tendencies of existing methods. Other pens have raised the note of alarm. Speaking on the character of the _product_ of the English schools, Faraday says, 'The whole evidence appears to show that the _reasoning faculties_ [mark, it is here the failure occurs, and here that it shows itself], in all classes of the community, are very imperfectly and insufficiently developed--_imperfectly, as compared with the natural abilities, insufficiently, when considered with reference to the extent and variety of information with which they are called upon to deal_.' Does not this strong language find equally strong warrant in current facts of individual conduct and of our social life? That there is yet no recognized complete method in, and no ascertained science of education, the latest writings on the subject abundantly reiterate and confirm. The best of our annual School Reports, and the most recent treatises,--among which, notwithstanding the abatement we must make for their having been, through adventitious circumstances, pushed in our country to a sudden and not wholly merited prominence, Sir. Spencer's republished essays may be named,--while they acknowledge some progress in details, disclose an undertone of growing conviction of the incompetency and unsatisfactoriness of our present modes of teaching and training. The Oswego School Report, speaking of primary education, tells us 'There has been too much teaching by formulas;' and that 'We are quite too apt, in the education of children, to "sail over their heads," to present subjects that are beyond their comprehension,' etc. Its way of escape 'out of the rut' is by importation into our country of the object-lesson system, as improved from the Pestalozzian original through the labors of Mr. Kay, now Sir J.K. Shuttleworth, and his co-laborers, of the Home and Colonial Infant and Juvenile School Society, London. In the report of Mr. Henry Kiddle, one of the four making up the collective School Report of the City of New York for 1861, the radical error of our present teachers is very forcibly characterized, where the danger of the teachers is pointed out as that of becoming 'absorbed in the mechanical routine of their office, losing sight of the _end_ in their exclusive devotion to what is only the _means--teaching the_ THING, _but failing to instruct the_ PERSON--eager to pour in knowledge, but neglecting to bring out mind.' Is there not indicated in these words a real and a very grave defect of the manner in which subjects are now presented, studied, recited, and finished up in our schools? We think there is. And then, what is the effect of this study and teaching, with so much less thought toward the _end_ than about the _material_?--what the result of this overlooking of the mind, the individuality, the person?--what the fruitage, at last, of having given so much time to the 'finishing up' of arithmetic, geography, and