bench, and every inch of extension that can be secured is of value in devising new experiments.

Hitherto the educational lantern has often been too cumbersome to transport, but in these days of University Extension, a portable instrument is much wanted. The old style of wooden instruments or the heavier college patterns are impracticable when the lecturer has to fill numerous appointments in different quarters of a city and in such out-of-town engagements as he may be inclined to accept. For the reason that portability is required by the wider call for the use of the lantern, it is likely that the metal lanterns will be almost exclusively called for where the lecturer's convenience is at all consulted. Considerations of economy in transporting apparatus demand an instrument that can be packed in one box along with whatever special accessory is needed.

We have not space to enumerate the appliances which may be added to the educational lantern, but we may call attention to the fact that art education will be likely to create a demand for the designing kaleidoscope with movable mirrors. Sir David Brewster never intended this instrument to degenerate into a toy, but hoped for its use as an aid in the production of designs. The drawback in such designs has been their stiffness, but with a little study it will be found that the graceful curves of handwork can be far excelled by a person who has really mastered the geometrical key to the handling of the lantern kaleidoscope. These designs. can be photographed and used as the work of printing is now developed.

The lantern polariscope is an instrument capable of entertaining a popular audience or of instructing a class in science. Hitherto complete instruments of this kind were enormously expensive and had to be imported, but there is no reason why we cannot have just as complete instruments as any made abroad. It requires only the combination of knowledge with an equipment of good brass working machinery to enable our American lantern trade to furnish our own schools with instruments that can do all that any foreign instrument claims to perform.

We are likely soon to have an arrangement by which the table microscope can be used for projection. Such an arrangement will provide for a substage equipment to bring all the available light from the five inch condensers to a focus on the microscopic slide. Any teacher who possesses a good microscope can then have it

adjusted for lantern work. A perfect portable lantern will have its box so arranged that a table microscope can be carried along with the lantern and be adjusted on a proper level to transmit the beam from the jet or arc light.

Those who read this article may wish to know what kind of stand to use for such a lantern. We would suggest the purchase of four of the largest rollers obtainable in the hardware stores. Mount on these rollers any open case, the whole arrangement standing about the height of the breast of the operator. The interior of the case should be large enough to carry the lime cylinders so that the whole apparatus can be moved back and forth at pleasure or be turned sideways when the prism is used in spectrum work.

For a screen nothing equals a paper faced screen on a roller like that used for maps, and such a screen can be made by any map-maker. It need not be more than from ten to fifteen feet square, and if such a screen is demanded it may be sold for about twelve dollars. A single screen to order might cost anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars, but it is the only screen worth having. Even better is the smooth, white finish of a plain wall. Where necessary the operator should have an opera glass to focus fine details in microscopic work, and the members of the class who own such glasses will find occasion for their use in following the lecturer.

If it is desired to darken a room perfectly the best material for curtains is a heavy dark canton flannel which is impervious to the brightest sunlight, but such curtains ought to cover the window by a liberal margin to prevent light entering at the sides.

THE CHILD AND THE HAREBELL.

ALICE HAMILTON RICH.

A harebell on its slender thread
Hung o'er a brook, as if to view
Itself, while swinging to and fro
In graceful curves, its bell of blue.

Above the flower, a little child

Of summers only two or three
Hung over it, as if to hear

The notes its bell rung tenderly.

THE

EDITORIAL.

HE Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is doing a noble service. During the year 1892 this society looked into the condition of 4,854 children who were orphans, or had been deserted by their parents, or were under the control of intemperate, vicious and criminal parents. The work done in rescuing many of these children and improving the condition of them all has been very great. It is a most beneficent work. It changes the destinies of many who would otherwise grow to be thieves, vagabonds and criminals into upright, useful citizens. This noble work deserves a far more generous support. The expenses for 1893 will aggregate $17,000. Annual members pay $5.00 each per year. Remittances may be sent to Charles Follen Atkinson, Treasurer, Box 1338, Boston, Mass.

THER

HERE seems to be an unnecessary effort in some quarters to find a deeply hidden plot in the very sensible policy inaugurated by Monsignor Satolli, in his recent instruction concerning parochial schools. On its face it is nothing more nor less than the very practical direction that, while the children of Catholic parents attend public schools their families and churches shall be urged to pay unusual attention to their religious education out of school. The New York Christian Union fervently hopes that some general arrangement between the warring sects should be made on this basis. But since every religious body in

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the country, save the two or three that incline to denominational education, are already doing just this, it would only seem necessary that the Catholic brethren should take the advice of the Papal Legate in order that the American idea in the matter should prevail. The American idea is, first, that moral and practical religious training lies at the basis of all education, both for manhood and womanhood and good citizenship. Second, that there are three natural agencies that must be depended upon to give this training in character,-the family, the church, and the State. This is only saying that the whole people, in these three different capacities, must do this fundamental work. Third, that these agencies, while working together for good," must each confine itself to its own natural circle of operation. The province of the state is, in a negative way through its entire legislation and administration and, in a positive way, through the present system of unsectarian public schooling, to be a great moral teacher of youth, in some ways the most powerful moral influence in society. Fourth, that as American civilization is founded on the moral ideals set forth in the New Testament, it is a misnomer to apply to a well-administered public school the theological nicknames that many of our clerical friends of all faiths are in the habit of applying. Meanwhile, if all families and churches will appropriate the wise counsel of the new legate, the children will be the gainers all round and the schools of all sorts will find it easier to deal with Young America.

ONE

NE would think, by this time, even "the wayfaring man though a fool" might understand that the object of the common school is to educate the whole people for good American citizenship. The imperative necessity of good citizenship, to-day, is the drying up of the slough of illiteracy which, like a pestilential underground slough permeates the lower regions of the republic with a sinkhole in every neighborhood. Yet there are thousands of good people who would die for their country but do not understand why they should" pay for educating other people's children"; especially if the "other people are the inhabitants of this underworld of American society. There are still neighborhoods, cities and two or three states in the Union whose school laws are a premium on wealth; securing to the children of the well-to-do all advantages, while tapering off in the direction of a school for the lower orders that is little better than a numskull wrestling with a mob of disorderly youngsters in a school-house unfit for the humane abode of beasts. While learned college faculties are loudly demanding the "enrichment" of the secondary education and experts physical and metaphysical, are studying "the contents of children's minds" through object glasses of the highest potency: it would seem that the

country waits for a great awakening on the subject of what to do with the great American slough of ignorance and its environments which is already breeding a moral pestilence prophetic of untold peril. Let us, for a few years, turn to and give these "other people's children" a fair chance to get themselves outside the three R's; and then this interminable polishing up of the more favored will not appear as such a ghastly commentary on the neglect of perishing millions.

ONE

NE of the propositions that lie at the foundation of the radical system of expert criticism, now being applied by Dr. Rice of the Forum, is that the school-side of an American city is to be tested by the toleration in any part of its domain of a poor school or group of inferior teachers. This is all very stringent and "superior"; but the difficulty is that, applied as a law of criticism, it would scuttle human society and land the human race at the bottom of the black sea of pessimism. Human nature has its own way of being educated even to moderate achievement, through the slow process of the training of successive generations. There are defects in every physical constitution; a skeleton-closet in every family; a "back yard" to every church; a "common herd" in every community. Especially, in those abnormal huddlings of "all sorts and conditions" that our great American cities have become, there are classes of people who, at best, can be only held outside of crime and, by no method at present known, can be forced rapidly upward. It is just as impossible to eliminate the sort of schools that Dr. Rice persists in calling attention to from our great systems of metropolitan schooling as to change at once the character of the people whose offspring are the pupils therein. Often, the very centres of fashion, the highest realms of church life, or the most exclusive circles of wealth are the most stolid and obstinate in their attachment to antiquated educational forms. In a school system constructed on the principle of a cider press, which grinds all varieties of humanity into one mass of pulp by a relentless turn of the screw from above, there may be a formal and superficial overcoming of such difficulties. But, in a representative government where every public institution must reflect every strata of society, we must bide our time and thank God if we can hold multitudes of children within the civilizing influence of even a very ordinary public school. The radical absurdity of the Rice method is the permitting these inevitable weak spots in American education to so hide the view of the better things that, outside of two or three western towns, there seems to be nothing to console the deep despair of this self-appointed censor of the educational affairs of the Republic.