successively more and more rational modes for the informing and developing of youthful minds; and, see!  Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Petrarch, Bacon, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Pere Girard, Arnold of Rugby, and Horace Mann—­to make no mention of many co-laborers among the dead, and earnest successors among the living—­stepping from their niches in the vanishing corridors of history, lay at our feet the treasures accumulated through their patient and clear thought and their faithful experience.

Will it then readily be believed—­and yet it is unquestionably true—­that, to this hour, neither the schools nor the teachers can be found that are in possession and practice of a well-defined, positively guiding, and always trustworthy method of intellectual, and other means and steps by which to conduct and consummate the education of our children?  Note, we do not here declare the want of the true and universal method of educating, if there can be such a thing; but we distinctly assert that no school and no living teacher employs or conforms to any well-defined, positive, and, in and for its purposes, completed method of educating the young; nor, since this latter is a supposition better pleasing certain critically-minded gentlemen, have we in anything like clear delineation and positive practice the several methods that may be imagined requisite for minds of varying bent and capacity.  If we sum up in one word the most pervading, constant, and obvious characteristic of our schools, and of the teaching and the learning in them to this day, that word must be, immethodical.  Although admitting that the education of the young should distinctly embrace the four departments of a training, physical, intellectual, moral, and social, yet, for the sake of clearness in our discussion and its results, not less than through the necessities of a restricted space, we shall here confine our remarks wholly to education in its intellectual aspect.

To move, for each subject, and for each part of it essayed, always along the right way, and by the true character and order of steps,—­that is the thing to be desired, and which is, as yet, unattained.  As a consequence, the prosecution of studies is by attempts and in ways that are generally imperfect, at best make-shift or provisional, often radically erroneous or worthless.  Doubtless, the defects in method are now less glaring and influential at the two extremes of the sensibly-conducted infant school, and the well-appointed and leisurely collegiate course.  There is no true study that is not what the origin of the word implies—­STUDIUM, a work of zeal, fondness, eager desire, voluntary endeavor, interest.  Such study has two essential characteristics; where these are wanting, study does not exist; the appearance of it is a sham; and though results disconnected and partial are attained, real acquisition is meager, and apparent progress deceptive.