lessons ... to make some simple and fundamental historical ideas
intelligible--a state, a nation, a dynasty, a monarch, a parliament,
legislation, the administration of justice, taxes, civil and foreign
war!" These are ideas far beyond the comprehension of the beginner. We
must be guided, not by "what happens to be near the child in time and
place, but by what lies near his interests." As Professor Bourne says:
"it may be that mediæval man, because his characteristics belong to a
simple type, is closer to the experience of a child than many a later
hero." With older children it is more likely to be true that the life of
history lies "in its personal connections with what is here and now and
still alive with us"; with historic places and relics, etc., which make
their appeal first through the senses; with institutions, such as trial
by jury; with anniversaries and celebrations of great events which may
be used to arouse interest in the history which they suggest and recall.

However, as McMurry points out, we are in a peculiarly favourable
position in Canada, because we have in our own history, in the
comparatively short time of 400 years, the development of a free and
prosperous country from a state of wildness and savagery. The early
stages of our history present those elements of life that appeal
strongly to children--namely, Indians with all their ways of living and
fighting, and the early settlers with their simpler problems and
difficulties. The development of this simpler life to the more complex
life of the present can be more readily understood by children as they
follow up the changes that have taken place. (See McMurry, _Special
Method in History_, pp. 26-30.) Of course, at every step appeal must be
made to the experiences of children, as the teacher knows them. In
Civics, however, the beginning must be made with conditions that exist
to-day--schools, taxes, the policeman, the postmaster, etc. The
beginning of the real teaching of history may then be made at the