by observation, is worth more than theoretic acquirements; the first
may supply for the second, but not the second for the first. There are
two types of educators of early childhood which no theory could
produce, and indeed no theory could tell how they are produced, but
they stand unrivalled--one is the English nurse and the other the
Irish. The English nurse is a being apart, with a profound sense of
fitness in all things, herself the slave of duty; and having certain
ideals transmitted, who can tell how, by an unwritten traditional
code, as to what _ought to be_, and a gift of authority by which she
secures that these things _shall be_, reverence for God, reverence in
prayer, reverence for parents, consideration of brothers for sisters,
unselfishness, manners, etc., her views on all these things are like
the laws of the Medes and Persians "which do not alter "--and they are
also holy and wholesome. The Irish nurse rules by the heart, and by
sympathy, by a power of self-devotion that can only be found where the
love of God is the deepest love of the heart; she has no views,
but--she knows. She does not need to observe--she sees' she has
instincts, she never lays down a law, but she wins by tact and
affection, lifting up the mind to God and subduing the will to
obedience, while appearing to do nothing but love and wait. The stamp
that she leaves on the earliest years of training is never entirely
effaced; it remains as some instinct of faith, a habit of resignation
to the will of God, and habitual recourse to prayer. Both these types
of educators rule by their gift from God, and it is hard to believe
that the most finished training in the art of nursery management can
produce anything like them, for they govern by those things that
lectures and handbooks cannot teach--faith, love, and common sense.

Those who take up the training of the next stage have usually to learn
by their own experience, and study what is given to very few as a