better adapted to its intended uses--the age it is designed to meet being that of the lowest classes in the primary schools, or say from four to seven or eight years--than any of its predecessors. It will not, we hope, therefore, be understood as in a captious spirit, that we take exception to certain details. The author is clearly right in his principle that 'The chief object of primary education is the development of the faculties;' though doubtless it would have been better to say, _to begin_ the development of the faculties; but then, he recognizes, as the faculties specially active in children, those of 'sensation, perception, observation, and simple memory,' adding, for mature years, those of 'abstraction, the higher powers of reason, imagination, philosophical memory, generalization,' etc. But that any one of all these is in the true psychological sense, a _faculty_--save, it may be, in the single instance of imagination--we shall decidedly question; and Mr. Calkins will see by the intent of his very lessons, that he does not contemplate any such thing as 'sensation' or 'observation,' as being a faculty: but, on the other hand, that he is so regarding certain individual powers of mind, by which we know in nature Color and Form and Number and Change and so on. We must question whether 'in the natural order of the development of the human faculties, the mind of the child takes cognizance first of the _forms_ of objects.' Form is a result of particular _extensions:_ evidently, extension must be known before form can be. But again, visibly, form is revealed through kinds and degrees of light and shade; in one word, through _color_. Evidently, then, color also must be appreciated before visible form can be. But this 'natural order of the development of the human faculties,' is a seductive thing. In phrase, it is mellifluous; in idea, impressively philosophical. It would be well if this book, while cautiously applying developing processes to the little learner, were to _dogmatise_ less to the teacher. But when the development-idea is carried into the titles of the sections, it becomes, we think, yet more questionable. Thus, a section is headed, 'To develop the idea of straight lines.' First, would not the idea of _a straight line_ come nearer to the thing actually had in view? Again, 'To develop the idea of right, acute, and obtuse angles.' 'The idea,' taking in all these things, must be most mixed and multifarious; it could not be _clear_, though that is a quality mainly to be sought. Is not the intention rather, to develop _ideas_ of _the right, the acute,_ and _the obtuse angle?_ Instances of this sort, which we can not understand otherwise than as showing a loose way of thinking, are numerous. But then, again, it is assumed that the lessons _develop_ all the ideas successively discoursed about. Far otherwise, in fact. In many instances, of course, a sharper, better idea of the object or quality