being deemed necessary for the purpose of inducing sleep and silence in the child.  My lord and husband protested against this treatment, proving to me the evil effects of this wrapping and rocking, by many and weighty reasons, and even said that it would injure the little ones for life, even if they survived the outrageous abuse they were subjected to.  I was astonished, and said, how can this be?  We were all trained and treated in this manner, and yet lived and grew up in the best possible style.  All our countrymen have been brought up in this way, and none of them that I know of have ever been injured in the way you suggest.  He gave it up, and allowed me to go on in the old way, until something happened which suddenly checked the babe in his progress in health and happiness.  He began to throw up his milk after nursing, and to grow ill, giving signs of brain disease, and then my lord said, you must now give up these customs and take my counsel.  So, on the spur of the moment, I accepted his advice and gave up the cradle.  I unrolled the bindings and wrappings and gave up myself to putting things in due order.  I clothed my child with garments adapted to his age and circumstances, and to the time and place, and regulated the times of his eating and play by day, and kept him awake as much as might be, so that he and his parents could sleep at night.  I soon saw a wonderful change in his health and vigor, though I experienced no little trouble from my efforts to wean him from the rocking of the cradle to which he was accustomed.  My favorable experience in this matter, led me to use my influence to induce the daughters of my race, and my own family relatives, to give up practices which are alike profitless, laborious and injurious to health.  My husband also aided me in getting books on the training of children, and I studied the true system of training, learning much of what is profitable to the mothers and fathers of my country in preserving the health of their children in mind and body.  The binding and wrapping of babes in the cradle prevents their free and natural movements, and the natural growth of the body, and injures their health.”

The next paper is from the pen of Khalil Effendi, editor of the Turkish official journal of Beirut.  It appeared in the columns of the “Hadikat el Akhbar” of January, 1867.  It represents the leading views of a large class of the more enlightened Syrians with regard to education, and by way of preface to the Effendi’s remarks, I will make a brief historical statement.

The Arab race were in ancient times celebrated for their schools of learning, and although the arts and sciences taught in the great University under the Khalifs of Baghdad, were chiefly drawn from Greece, yet in poetry, logic and law the old Arab writers long held a proud preeminence.  But since the foundation of the present Ottoman Empire, the Arabs have been under a foreign yoke, subject to every form of oppression and wrong, and for generations hardly a poet worth