The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the national history, the history of their own race and country; for English girls the history of England, not yet constitutional history, but the history of the Constitution with that of the kings and people, and further the history of the Empire.  To this period of education belong the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.  We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of our own.  The time to teach it is in that unsettled “middle age” of childhood when its exuberant feeling is in search of an ideal, when large moral effects can be appreciated, when there is some opening understanding of the value of character.

If the first period of childhood delights in what is strange, this second period gives its allegiance to what is strong, by preference to primitive and simple strength, to uncomplex aims and marked characters; it appreciates courage and endurance, and can bear to hear of sufferings which daunt the fastidiousness of those who are a few years older; perhaps it can endure so much because it realizes so little, but the fact remains true.  This age exults in the sufferings of the martyrs and cannot bear the suggestion that plain duties may be heroic before God.  There is a great deal that may be done for minds in this period of development by the teaching of history if it is not crippled in its programme.  To make concrete their ideals of greatness in the right personalities—­a work which is as easily spoiled by a word out of season as a fine porcelain vase is cracked in a furnace—­to direct their ideas of the aims of life towards worthy and unselfish ends, to foster true loyalty because of God from whom all authority comes—­and this lesson has its pathetic poignancy for us in the history of our English martyrs—­to show the claims that our country has upon the devotion of its sons and daughters, and to inspire some feeling of responsibility for its honour, especially to show the supreme worth of character and self-sacrifice, all these things may and must be taught in this middle period of children’s education if they are to have any strong hold upon them in after life.  It is a stubborn age in which teaching has to be on strong lines and deep ones; when the evolution of character is in the critical period that is to make or mar its future, it needs a strong hand over it, with power both to control and to support, a strong mind to command its respect, strong convictions to impress it, and strong principles on which to test its own young strength; and all those who have the privilege of teaching history to children of this age have an incomparable opportunity of training mind