interest; determine whether a given year be bissextile or not, &c. &c. The upper classes determine the age of the moon at any given time, the day of the week which corresponds with any day of any month, and year, and Easter Sunday for a given year. They will square any number not exceeding a thousand, extract the square root of a number of not more than five places, determine the space through which a body falls in a given time, the circumference and areas of circles from their diameters, and solve many problems in mensuration: they practise also Mental Algebra, &c. In mental, no less than in written, Arithmetic, 'by assimilating the questions to those which actually occur in the transactions of life,' the pupil is made sensible that he is rising into the usefulness and respectability of real business. The imitative principle of man is thus made to blend with the motive derived from the sense of utility. The same blended feelings, combined with the pleasurable influences of open air, are relied upon for creating the love of knowledge in the practice of surveying. In this operation so large an aggregate of subsidiary knowledge is demanded,--of arithmetic, for instance--of mensuration--of trigonometry, together with 'the manual facility of constructing maps and plans,' that a sudden revelation is made to the pupils of the uses and indispensableness of many previous studies which hitherto they had imperfectly appreciated; they also 'exercise their discretion in choosing points of observation; they learn expertness in the use, and care in the preservation of instruments: and, above all,--from this feeling that they are really _at work_, they acquire that sobriety and steadiness of conduct in which the elder school-boy is so often inferior to his less fortunate neighbour, who has been removed at an early age to the accompting-house.'--The value of the sense of utility the Experimentalist brings home forcibly to every reader's recollections, by reminding him of the many cases in which a sudden desire for self-education breaks out in a few months after the close of an inefficient education: 'and what,' he asks, 'produces the change? The experience, however short, of the utility of acquisitions, which were perhaps lately despised.' Better then 'to spare the future man many moments of painful retrospection,' by educing this sense of utility, 'while the time and opportunity of improvement remain unimpaired.' Finally, the sense of utility is connected with the peculiar exercises in _composition_; 'a department of education which we confess' (says the Experimentalist) 'has often caused us considerable uneasiness;' an uneasiness which we, on our part, look upon as groundless. For starting ourselves from the same point with the Experimentalist and the authority he alleges--viz. that the _matter_ of a good theme or essay altogether transcends the reflective powers and the opportunities for observing of a raw school-boy,--we