confined to another room. They can see and hear all that is going on,
and understand it far more than you would suppose, though they cannot
yet tell all they learn and know; but when the power of speech comes,
they will surprise you with what they have learned. It is therefore a
great error to separate children and cut them off from the advantage
of all object-lessons, and gallery-teaching, because they are the
youngest. They learn more through sympathy and communion with their
five or six year elders, than the most clever adult can teach them. An
infant-school, is, in many respects, a community in a state of nature.
What one does, the other almost involuntarily learns. The merest
infants are not an exception to this rule, and therefore the
separation in many infant-schools of the children, invariably into
two classes, sometimes in two rooms, is a great mistake, and can only
arise from ignorance of the laws under which the young mind
unfolds itself, and a misunderstanding of the first principles of
infant-teaching.

Perhaps one reason that infant-school teaching has not been kept up to
its proper point and true standing, is, the desire to make a striking
shew before the visitors in a school. I fear the grounds for this
opinion are not slight. Perhaps nothing has lead more to the
multiplication of singing, even to the injury of the children. The
ease with which they learn a metrical piece by _rote_, and the
readiness with which they acquire a tune to it, is surprising, and as
the exhibition of such attainments forms a striking sinew, in many
cases little else is taught them. But to a sensible and thinking mind,
one single piece _understood_, that is, one where clear ideas are
annexed to the words in the minds of the children, is worth a hundred
where this is not the case. Intellectual improvement, and moral
training, are not thus easily exhibited, especially, the latter; but