to education, and in most towns and many villages there are girls' schools kept by Sisters of Charity, some as sewing schools, others as salles d'asile or infant schools, but always giving some religious instruction.

In Germany 'the religious difficulty' has been so successfully manipulated that, though something called religion is taught, and furnishes the subject of hymns, Bible stories, and the like, it is so undogmatic that nobody heeds or cares about it, and it becomes a sweet, childlike inward sentiment, finding its chief expression in the Christmas tree, which is all the more delightful from its connection with the ash Yggdrasil.'

There has now been full time for generations to grow up and show the working of the culture system, and its effects both with regard to manliness and refinement. Perhaps, however, it is fair to observe that it is difficult and invidious for the native of one country to judge of the refinement of a foreigner, since different standards naturally prevail, so that mere decorum in one country seems affectation in another, and coarseness in the ears of one nation is but simplicity to its neighbour. We call a man brutal when he beats his wife or kicks his fallen foe; the French call him brutal if he speaks an abrupt truth, does not say 'monsieur' or 'madame' every fourth word, or comes into a shop with his hat on; and the Germans think it an insult not to declare on your envelope that your correspondent is well born, nobly born, and all the rest of it.

Still there is an ideal standard of refinement. It is the outcome of the realisation of the truth that we are all children of God, members of Christ, and temples of the Holy Ghost. This knowledge gives courtesy, modesty, and self-respecting dignity, telling as much against clownishness as against grossness and conceit. If monks of old revelled in uncleanliness and vermin it was not because they were Christians, but because they were not Christians enough. Such good breeding as comes of the Law of Love is to be found among all ranks, though the outward show of it is generally attained almost as an inheritance by the higher classes in all countries, and it ought to be the object of culture to render it universal. Indeed, it becomes almost the test of the reality of culture, and, on the other hand, as soon as manliness becomes impaired by cultivation it becomes evident that there is some error in the treatment.

We are here dealing with the two nations whose proverbial

1 See 'Cradle Songs,' Macmillan's Magazine.

character places the first at the head of Dame Europa's school for manners, the other-shall we say, at the bottom of the class? We think we must rank it there, when we remember Erasmus's description of a German inn, and recollect Freytag's sketches. Owing to her numerous petty divisions and fierce intermittent wars, Germany fell far behind other nations in the progress of civilisation and morality in the Middle Ages, and, in spite of the vast strides that intellect has made, the mass of her people do not seem to have been drawn out of roughness and boorishness. Thus the material has to be taken into consideration when considering the effects of training.

We borrow some descriptions of the German plans of training from Mr. Joseph Payne's Visit to German Schools :—

'I visited in Hamburg some of the Bürger-Kindergärten, of which there are, I believe, nine in different parts of the town. In one of them I found several children, a division of whom were busily employed in constructing various forms and building with the little cubes of the fifth Gift. The fifth Gift presents a cube as divided into twenty-seven smaller cubes, and these are divided diagonally into fifty-four half-cubes or prisms. Thus considered, it affords opportunity for forming (1) life objects, (2) beauty objects, (3) knowledge objects.'-Payne, p. 26.

The 'life object' in the woodcut bears a distant resemblance to a house; the beauty object is a sort of ornamental cross within a square; the knowledge objects seem to be squares. Another Gift is what is called Flechten, and consists of weaving strips of paper, whether white or coloured, into objects of life and beauty in a sort of matting such as some of us remember old ladies trying to persuade restless children to make for book-markers.

Again, at Berlin Mr. Payne found the children from three to seven going through instructive games, some of which have, we think, been imported to our infant schools. Here

is one :

The Sportsman.-The children forming a large ring with joined hands, and singing a song adapted to the subject, one of them is detached to represent a midge disporting itself in the sunshine. He runs round the circle, throwing his arms about to imitate flying. Another child is then detached to represent a sparrow, who attacks the midge and swallows it up (a large demand on the imagination certainly). The midge vanishes, and the sparrow remains. A hawk (another child) immediately pounces on the sparrow and despatches him, but not with impunity, for a sportsman, who has been on the watch for the hawk, shoots him, and he falls to the ground, to the great delight of the children, who thereupon utter an animated shout.' -P. 47.

To make this lesson completely illustrative of the 'good old plan,' for the sportsman should have been substituted the Prussian eagle. But perhaps he had a needle gun.

The children also learn Netzzeichnen-that is, drawing straight lines on a paper ruled in squares, like uncoloured patterns for ladies' cross-stitch. They learn counting, beating time, manual exercises, and singing the latter, strange to say, not at all well-sometimes reading and writing; but these were not intended by Fröbel, the inventor of the system. One great point on which he insisted-the employing the human blossoms in the cultivation of the vegetable blossoms, and making them work in the garden---seems to be almost wholly neglected, and is probably impracticable, for very few Kindergärten had gardens attached to them, and these were neglected. Ventilation to English nostrils at least- seems not to be understood, and one large infant school at Hamburg was actually kept in a room used in the evening by a gymnastic club, and still full of the fumes of tobacco.

-

In Weimar Mr. Payne witnessed the religious teaching.

"The business of the morning began at eight o'clock with a short prayer, all standing. The lesson was on the history of Moses, a portion of which the teacher related in a simple manner. He then asked a number of questions, which the children answered readily. They appeared to be much interested. The good answers were repeated simultaneously by the whole class, some of the little boys nodding their heads and swaying their bodies while they answered, as if naturally moved by the interest of the story. This little trait struck me forcibly. Now and then they were required to repeat after the teacher some little rhymes. At another time the teacher said, "When we feel ourselves fresh and well in the morning, what ought we to do?" "We ought to pray and give thanks to the dear God." On the whole this was an interesting little lesson.'-P. 81.

The Kindergärten are not universal, and the teachers of the schools which receive the children from them at six or seven years of age complained that the little ones came up from them bringing with them 'the play spirit,' of which it was hard to cure them, and that there was so much routine and drill as to take away all their originality. The schoolmaster who made this observation did not, however, permit any play even in the intervals between the lessons, when the children went into the open air, saying that 'it disorganised them.'

To the primary schools everybody goes between seven and thirteen, under heavy penalties. The reading, writing, and arithmetic appear, by Mr. Payne's judgment, to be

thoroughly well and intelligently taught. No teacher used a book when hearing reading. If he could not understand the children, their reading was not up to the mark. At Dresden he saw the writing lesson given, the class making all the motions for each letter in the air with a dry pen simultaneously, and by word of command, before they put pen to paper. The lessons in geography, botany, and natural history, and what are in England called 'object lessons,' are also most excellent. History (?) was taught at Gotha to the children of eight years old by a teacher who narrated to them the stories of Ulysses and of Orpheus and Eurydice, observing that 'the history of the Fatherland is too difficult.'

Everybody, then, comes out of these schools able to read, spell, and write; but, after all the lessons in forms of life and beauty, here is the description of the common run of girls who present themselves for service-never, be it observed, till their course of school education is completed :—

"They are turned out [from school] hopelessly uncouth; coarse in manner, and unhandy at their work; often incorrigibly dirty, without aptitude or willingness to learn; doggedly satisfied with themselves, and convinced that the right thing to do is to treat any attempt on your part to ameliorate their manners or improve their condition with a loutish ridicule. "While I have seen," says a writer in the Contemporary Review, pointing out the difference between mere book-learning and education, "while I have seen perfect manners of their kind in the peasants of more than one country, Eastern and Western, I think the worst-mannered people in Europe -perhaps in the world-are the highly-taught Prussians." -German Home Life, p. 3.

Something, no doubt, was here due to national resistance to English ways, but we have seen the same account of the unconquerable boorishness and incapacity of German servants complained of by an English resident at Erfurt, who laboured in vain to impress on them what we should regard as the ordinary proprieties of life. German household stories which aim at nature likewise put the servant and the peasant in an unpleasant light. Auerbach especially shows the latter as surly, disobliging, set against improvement, and doing wilful mischief. Nor is it only English travellers who complain of the rough treatment they receive from railway officials. We have known a young German lady speak of such discomforts in travelling in Germany, and say how different it is as soon as she passed the Belgian frontier, and in England.

Surely this is not a pleasing outcome of some nine years or so spent in diligent culture of the intellect.

And we

are afraid there is a much deeper and more terrible accusation to bring against the lower classes in Germany, and that of female servants especially, though it is in great part the fault of the cruel and short-sighted marriage laws.1

Marriage amongst the lower orders in Germany is cumbered about with so many restrictions and conditions that it has come to be looked on as almost an impossibility. I remember once hearing a lively discussion on this very subject in a northern duchy, where emigration, cholera, and the impossibility of marriage among the labouring classes had more than decimated the population. The harvest lay that year rotting in the fields, and there was no hand to reap and gather in the golden grain. The neglected peasant offspring cannot bring the same fibre to his work as though care and comfort had been his, and it certainly seems a false political economy which restrains marriage lest pauper families should multiply, and yet cannot prevent the emigration of thousands of tillers of the soil with their illegitimate offspring.'-German Home Life, p. 17.

The consequence is that the German households do not lay claim to what the most careless Englishwoman would require-in appearance, at least-respectability in their women servants. In England there may sometimes be shams; wedding rings are assumed occasionally with the connivance of the lady of the house; but the very deceit shows a different state of things from that in which the Amme-a far more common institution in Germany than here seldom is even supposed to be married. Those who have ever tried to find a safe service for a penitent in England can hardly believe in such sentences as these :

'I never got anyone to be in the least surprised, sympathetic, indignant, hurt, or otherwise emotional on the subject. German ladies take all this—as indeed, to do them justice, they take most things-very philosophically. It was the custom-ländlich sittlich. That which precedent has consecrated let no man or woman cavil at. It had its conveniences. I partly agree with what you say," a friend once replied, to whom I had been stating my grievances; but I was always particular that my Amme had only one Bräutigam.'-German Home Life, p. 18.

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Nor does there, according to this book, appear to be any of that ordinary supervision of the ways of servants that— religion apart-English families of the better class think due to their own respectability.

'In engaging a servant you will find that she invariably bargains for her "Sunday out." She belongs to a Kränzchen, or club, and it

1 We are glad to learn that of late there has been some relaxation of these laws.