_Manual Labor Schools_ (on the Fellenberg plan) have not multiplied there, or grown in esteem, as might have been expected from the forwardness of the people in adopting every valuable improvement; and particularly, from the congeniality of this one with their own long-cherished custom, of blending labor with study. Possibly, this very custom may, in their eyes, make the improvement unnecessary: since their youth already substantially enjoy its advantages. To study in winter--to work in summer--has, time out of mind, been the routine of New England education: differing from the Fellenberg method only in having the alternations half-_yearly_, instead of half-_daily_.--Franklin, the Trumbulls, Sherman, Dwight, Pickering, Webster, Burges, and all the illustrious self-made men, who have rendered that otherwise unkindly soil so verdant with laurels, were nurtured strictly in the discipline of _manual labor schools_: and perhaps the new method would be quite needless, were not the progress of wealth, luxury, indolence and pride, now rapidly swelling the numbers of those who, urged by no necessity, and relying upon no exertions of their own for distinction, would never feel the salutary influence of labor, if not sent to schools where it is taught; and were not the same progress multiplying those also, who never could procure instruction, except by the opportunity which this method affords them, of purchasing it by their labor. Perhaps too, the Common Schools (in which poor and rich are equally entitled to learn) may tend still more to render the new plan useless; as to the branches of knowledge taught in them. _Infant Schools_ appear to have sunk a good deal in esteem, among intelligent people in New England. At Hartford, a lady, whose name (were it seemly to publish a lady's name) would give commanding weight to the opinion, told me that they were found hurtful both to body and mind: To _body_ (and this the physicians confirmed) by overexciting, and thus injuring, the brain and the nervous system: to _mind_, by inducing the habit of learning parrot-like, by rote--by sound merely--without exercise of the thinking power. It seems agreed, that some features of the infant school system may advantageously be transferred to ordinary schools: for instance, the use of tangible and visible symbols and illustrations. And infant schools themselves are certainly well enough, for those children who would otherwise have to be left alone, or untended, while their parents are abroad or at work. But for _young children_, where the sternest necessity does not forbid, there is nothing comparable to _domestic education_; no care, no skill, no authority, like those of a mother--or of a father. And how few parents there are, who, by methodical husbandry of time, and reasonable exertion of intellect, might not find both leisure and ability to train the minds and form the habits of their offspring, for at least the first nine years of life!