by various degrees of likeness, there are hundreds of schools where the government, if not an absolute failure, is still far from being a success. Instead of a great and benign educating force, such as it should be, helping on, with its kindly and regulating influences, all the other work of the school, it is a constant and grevious burden to both teacher and taught, wearing upon them as some ill-fitting yoke, and exhausting with its unremit ting strain, both their patience and their strength. A badly governed school must be forever a poorly taught school; while a well and wisely governed school cannot fail of beneficient results.

But if good government is so important to the school, how much more important to each individual pupil! How inadequate the education of any human soul that has not been taught to love order and obey law! A little reflection will convince every thinking mind that there is no educating influence in the school room so powerful and so benign as that of good government. A silent presence, it rests down, with its great framework of law and order, upon the mind and body of each pupil, and like some mighty seal, impresses its form and signature upon the conduct and character. If he abides steadily under such influences, the pupil grows up into orderly habitudes of thought and action, till he rises to the power and dignity of a self-governed soul.

The importance of good school government is only equalled by its difficulties. To hold in quiet fifty pairs of little hands and feet not wonted to keep still; to repress to silence fifty little tongues itching to whisper to their comrades some sudden thought or fancy; to control within the limits of good order the quick, volcanic impulses of unschooled children, bursting with sudden joys, angers, griefs and eager curiosity; to check with awe the willful and wayward hearts of these passionate and unreflecting natures, irritated by the unnatural constraint of their confinement and their tasks, incited by the presence of so many kindred beings, and rendered perverse, it may be, by a long course of bad management at home; to inspire all this mass of childhood with the common aims, and to engage it

heartily in the common work of the school; to secure from each the due amount of study, so that the several classes may go forward together; to administer justice to this little community of hasty and irascible spirits; to do all this, and more, under the criticism and watchful jealousy of all the parcnts in the district, sometimes more captious and unreasonable even than the children themselves; to do it hour after hour, and day after day, with unremitting vigilance, and unflagging strength, in sickness and in health; and to do it, moreover, while the brain is racked and every faculty is strained to its utmost with the duty of teaching half a score of studies, grappling each hour with thre brain-splitting problem of making the dark things of science light to childish minds, and its high things accessible to their feeble reach; well might the strongest and wisest shrink from a task so herculean, so seemingly impossible. And when we reflect that those who are called to this severe work, are not the men of ripe years, and large experience, and mature strength, but often slight girls and beardless youth, scarcely out of their own childhood, the wonder will be, not that so many fail to govern well, but that any govern at all. Well may we ask of the fault-finding parents to cease from their thoughtless and heart crushing censures, and lend a helping hand, or at least an encouraging smile, to the pale-faced and wearied teacher, who daily faces, in yonder school-room, a task so mighty and yet so important as this.

But if the work is difficult, the high aims of good government are inspiring, and the helping forces are strong and easily reached by him who knows how to marshal and use them. I know not how I can do a better service for our public schools, at the present hour, than by an enumeration of the aims, and an explanation of the forces of a true government of children; and perhaps by a glance at the principles on which such government should proceed, and the penalties by which it may be best maintained. Let it be understood that by the government of a school we mean not merely the repression of noise and confu

sion, and the punishment of offences; but the entire system and arrangement of places, persons, times, studies, work and movement in the school-room. Governing is establishing and maintaining this system and arrangement of things; or, in brief words, it is putting things in order, and keeping them in order.

The aims of school government demand our first and most earnest attention, since they determine its extent and values, and give law to all its methods. A low or inadequate view of these aims will almost necessarily lead to a weak or pernicious gov

ernment.

1st. The first and most obvious, though not the highest aim of the government of a school, is to maintain a degree of order and quiet that will permit the ordinary work of the schoolthe teaching and study-to go on without undue impediment or delay. This aim is too simple and obvious to need discussion.

2d. A second and higher purpose, is to train the pupils to habits of order and system,-to educate them to regular and systematic efforts, and to methodical and orderly movement, both of mind and body. In the quiet and system of a well ordered school room, the pupils learn the utility of having a place and time for every thing, and of keeping everything in its place and time. Themselves a part of the general order, they are trained to keep time to the general movement. The neatness and regularity reigning in the school-room slowly but surely transfer themselves to the habits and character of the pupils, and go forth with them to the duties of their after lives.

3d. A third aim is to train the pupils to live in a well ordered society, to accustom them to abide peacefully under the regular administration of laws, and in organized communities, and thus and thus to educate them for citizenship in the State.

The school is the State in miniature. The little citizens come into the common body with personal rights and individual aims; but they find there common interests and duties, and are bound by the demands of the common well-being. Here they owe allegiance to the governing power over them, and common charities

and co-operation to their fellows around them. What better training for the duties of adult citizenship can be found than to learn to live peacefully, helpfully and honestly in this schoolroom State! The well governed school, with its wholesome laws, its systematic industries, its fine mingling of personal and common duties, its authoritative administration of justice, and its controlling public sentiment, by which each child is taught that the rights and opinions of the one must, when necessary, yield to the rights and opinions of the many, is the very nursery in which all the high qualities of a true citizenship can be reared into power.

4th. Another and still higher aim of school government is the education of the will. The ordinary school studies address themselves to the intellect. In the fields of knowledge there is food for the perception, the judgment, the reason; in art there is culture for the eye, the hand, the taste; but there is no study for the will. In the domains of law, it must seek its exercise and training, if anywhere. Sitting, as a simple, but kingly power, shrined in the very center of the soul's personality, it displays itself, not in thinking, or in feeling, but in actionlaw-guided and law-governed action. If, then, we would educate this part of our nature-this great ruling section of the soul-which holds control over all the remainder, making the man weak or strong, according as it holds with a strong or feeble grasp to its chosen purposes,-if we would add the element of personal power to the education which is also only a mere possession, we must address to the will the behests of law, and train it to act under the reign of rightful authority. The will of the little child is the slave of every fitful impulse; it veers in its purposes with every changing fancy; its resolutions are as ropes of sand; its plans are abandoned at the first impediment. Under the firm hand of a wise teacher, this childish will learns to obey with a steady obedience, and thus comes at last to command, both itself and others, with a steady power. This is the great truth that underlies the old maxim, "let him who would command first learn to obey." I affirm

without hesitation that this is the highest and most central of all education. And this education is the product of good government alone.

5th. The education of the moral nature is another high and legitimate aim of school government. This government, if it be just and kind, as well as systematic and orderly, is a constant lesson to the moral nature. It may well be questioned whether there is any moral teaching so impressive and plastic as that enforcement of order, and steady, daily performance of duties which prevail in a well governed school. The realm of morals is simply the realm of right, and it is the central aim of all good government to inspire and enforce right doing. Every just law is a constant lesson to the conscience, defining the right and commanding it as duty. The child that obeys cannot but grow purer and stronger by his obedience. But the genial quiet and peaceful good order of the wisely governed school is the very atmosphere in which the higher sentiments flourish and all noble aspirations grow.

6th. But finally, there is another and grander use in good government than all these-grander, because it is comprehensive of them all. It is to fit the soul for its residence and destiny in this great universe of law. Look where we will, throughout this great empire of God, the fact that meets us everywhere, in all without us, and all within, is the power and prevalence of LAW-all comprehending, all controlling, eternal, irresistible, irreversible law. Holding in its grasp every world that wheels through space, and every atom that floats in the light, every burning sun, and every bursting flower,-governing every form of matter and every force in nature,--marshalling the seasons, modeling all growths, and meteing out destiny to every creature,-law is the very frame-work and moulding force of all material things. Nor do we escape it in the realm of mind. Not a fancy flits through the brain, nor a train of reflection moves to its conclusion, but obeys the great laws of thought; not an emotion stirs the heart, or a passion sweeps the soul, but law orders its rise and decline. Thus man is girt in by law