We have often tried to imagine the nature of the report which the great Swiss educator, Pestalozzi, and his greater pupil, Froebel, would have indited, had they been sent to China to examine the school system' of that empire, The essence of the teaching and practice of these world-renowned edu: caters was that the pedagogue must enter into the life and being of the child whom he teaches, and must summon the mental faculties by a natural process, leading them on step by step without fatigue and with delighted interest, until the pupil has in reality taught himself what he needs most to know. The essence of Chinese teaching is to introduce mental concepts into the minds of the scholars, just as lime is worked into the texture of the cash bags used all over the empire, by incessant pounding on a resisting surface.
When a Chinese boy has attained the age of seven or eight years, the question is sometimes raised whether he shall be sent to school, We say sometimes", for it is but a minute fraction of the whole number of Chinese boys who ever see the inside of a school-room, and of that small fraction but a microscopic part ever continue their studies to such a point as to make any practical use of what has been learned.
The Chinese language, as may be known te some of our readers, is of a pictorial nature. The almost infinite variety of its characters may all be distributed into a comparatively small number of genera, and these again into larger number of species. Toustheinordinately largemassof unfamiliar symbols seems a load t00 great to be home by any single mind, but that is mainly because We come to them from across a wide
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.