should ever be given to a fifth year pupil-teacher who fails in these matters, or who has not got a proper control of children. Of the rest of inspection of class teaching, viz., by pupil-teachers and candidates, I will speak when I come to the upper schools (see § 15).

10. Gallery Lessons in Infant Schools.—Whether the principal teacher is a probationer, or known to him or not, it will probably be desirable that the inspector should hear her give a gallery lesson. Young teachers of infant schools are sometimes apt to think they can do this well, but have generally much to learn in it. And older teachers, unless called upon by the inspector to give such lessons, are apt to get careless and slovenly in them. There are few parts of the teacher's art in which practice is more important, or in which time and trouble are more often misspent. I have seen a gallery lesson given in an infant school, in a great town, by a teacher newly come from a training college, to a class of twenty or thirty children, averaging from five to seven years, with one or two lady managers sitting by in smiling satisfaction, which was perfectly, useless as a means of education. The children did not understand half the words that were used, and though they preserved a grave and apparently attentive demeanour, they were unable, within two minutes of the end of the lesson, to answer the most rudimentary questions on the lesson, or, in fact, to tell one word of what the teacher had been talking to them about.

11. Mistakes in Gallery Lessons.—In inspecting a collective or gallery lesson, whether given by the principal teacher or by one of the senior pupil-teachers

in the infant school, the inspector will bear in mind those faults which his experience teaches him are most commonly made by teachers in giving such lessons, and will look carefully to see how far the teacher whose work he is inspecting is free from them. The following may be mentioned as among the most common of such faults:

(1). As to the Matter of the Lesson.-(a) Not Preparing the Lesson carefully Beforehand.-No collective lesson ought ever to be given, no matter how simple the subject may be, without preparation. One of the most distinguished and successful of the head-masters of our public schools once told me that he never felt it right to give a lesson to his sixthform, even in so well-known an author as Virgil, without preparation. Yet he is one of the best scholars in the country, and must be familiar with almost every line of that author. line of that author. And no doubt this is the right view for a teacher to take of the work of teaching. If an infant school teacher does not carefully prepare her collective lesson, the result is very soon apparent to an on-looker. The unprepared lesson will be unmethodical, ill-arranged, showing want of reflection and resource, and generally inadequate to the subject and the occasion. Teachers who do not prepare their lessons become more and more inefficient, instead of improving, as time goes on. Every teacher should keep a note-book, to be used on purpose for the preparation of lessons. And the inspector should, when he inspects the infant school, inquire whether the principal teacher keeps such a book and accustoms her pupil-teachers who have passed their third year to do the same And he should

ask to see these note-books, in order that he may form some opinion of what is the work which has been done by the teachers in the infant school by way of preparation for the instruction to be given to their scholars. If no such notes are kept or forthcoming, the inspector will ask a few questions, such as, "On what subjects have you given object lessons, or lessons in Natural History, or any collective or gallery lessons during the past year ? Then taking one of those lessons which has been recently delivered, he will inquire what steps the teacher took to prepare for delivering that lesson. If no such preparation appears to have been made, the inspector will of course call attention to this grave defect in his report. And if it appears that some attempts have been made to prepare, but that no notes have been taken or kept of such preparation, the inspector will point out the advantages of taking and keeping such notes, not only for the sake of the scholars, but also for the sake of training young pupil-teachers. The preparation note-book of an experienced teacher is a most valuable aid to a young pupil-teacher in teaching her how to prepare for a lesson, where to go for her materials, and how to manage them. It is also most useful to the inspector when he comes to ask the upper classes of the infant school questions on the gallery lessons which have been given them during the last few months; because, if the preparation note-book is put into his hands, he can see exactly what the children are supposed to have been taught, and on what it may be fairly expected that they should answer his questions. Every time that a lesson is given from the notes entered in the note-book the date of such delivery of the lesson should be affixed to the notes.

This will not only help the teacher in reviewing or going over back work, but will also serve as a guide to the inspector in weighing the results of any examination, conducted either by himself or by the teacher on his behalf and in his presence.

(b) Another fault which may be noticed under this heading is that of not giving a Lesson in plain, homely Language, or dwelling on those Points in it which come home to the Children. This is not an uncommon fault of object lessons. Such lessons sometimes consist of little more than a string of attributes, described in long names of Greek or Latin origin. It is scarcely necessary to say that such lessons are worthless, and disgust children with their school. The inspector will notice whether the class in coming to its gallery lesson is lively or dull. If the gallery lessons given in a school are good, the children will come to them with a sense of pleasure; they will know they are going to hear something interesting, and will be on the tiptoe of expectation. But if all that is going to be done with them is to hold up a piece of coal, or of wool, before them, to tell them its properties in long outlandish words, and to expect them to repeat those words after the teacher, they will of course be listless and dull. The curiosity of the young is so great, their desire for information on matters which interest them is so keen, that a teacher who takes pains will have no difficulty whatever in rousing them. Her difficulty will rather be to moderate their excitement. No object lesson should ever be given without the accompaniment of a little story or anecdote. This will not only help to fix the information given by the lesson in the children's minds, but will be repeated by many of them to their parents at home,

and will serve to interest the parents in the work of the school.

(c) Another fault which may be mentioned under this heading is that some teachers do not make the most of their resources. I have known an infant school teacher complain that the managers did not furnish her with an object-box, and give that as an excuse for not having delivered any object lessons during the course of the past year, while all the time there were pictures hanging on the walls of the school-room from which she might have given a course to last several years, and while the county all round was teeming with natural and artificial objects of interest. I remember once, in the county of Durham, taking down from the wall of an infant school an excellent coloured print of a rhinoceros, and asking the first class, who were chiefly pitmen's children and fairly intelligent, some questions about it. Not one of them knew what it meant; they had never been told anything about it. At last, after a careful and wondering study, one little boy said "It's a coodie," meaning thereby a donkey. One would scarcely have thought it possible that a teacher of infants should have spent a year in working with them, in a room where there was such a picture, and not have talked to them at all about it. But no one who has not been an inspector of schools can imagine how wanting in resource, adaptation, and the general power of making the most of their materials some of our trained teachers are.

(2). Astothe Manner of the Lesson.-The inspector will look to see whether the class is under proper control and whether it is judiciously arranged in the gallery; whether the older and more steady children