HYMN. WHEN clouds on clouds portentous rise, To some lone cot that opens nigh. Then safely lodged, though storms may beat, Within his close and warm retreat Our life is like a stormy day, Its brightest hours are but the gleams Life's calms are few, its tempests rude, To all thy servants, Thou art near, There on thy bosom they repose, From toil, and fear, and danger free- London, Feb. 26, 1839. S. W. H. HOME EDUCATION. No. V. OUR author's suggestions, in his chapter on the 'training of the sense of resemblance and relation, and of the perception of analogy,' should, we think, be adopted with caution. If acted upon in their length and breadth, without any contemporaneous training of a more orderly and systematic kind, they would probably foster desultory habits of mind, and tend to incapacitate it, or give at least a distaste for continuous application. 'The very characteristic,' he says, ' of that sort of culture which should be addressed to the intuitive faculties is, that it abounds in sudden transitions and extreme contrasts, as well in its subjects as in the mode of presenting them' (p. 324); and the methods of exercise which I have to suggest are proper, some to the fifth year, some to the fifteenth' (p. 305.) During this period, however, he assumes ' that a moderate proficiency in the mathematics has been made' (p. 317): and, as he holds that when the reason and the other active powers come to be elicited, a well digested consecutive system must be adhered to' (p. 324), we infer, that the changeful, desultory, rambling style' (p. 325) of instruction, which he advocates for the culture of the intuitive faculties, is not in his view, to be the only, or even the predominant, style, till the age of fifteen, but is to be counterbalanced and modified, by the orderly and well digested culture of the active faculties. But as he reserves for a future volume his suggestions for this 'well-digested consecutive' culture, we have thought it well to give this caution, lest any of our readers should adopt his suggestions respecting the training of the sense of resemblance and relation, and of the perception of analogy, without that counterbalance and modification which the orderly culture of the reason and other active faculties-not forgetting the memory-provides. Without such counterbalance and modification, desultory habits, we fear, will be formed before the end of the fifteenth year, which it will be very difficult to correct : nor, at that late period, will the teacher find it easier to introduce and enforce that well-digested system,' which then at least must be adhered to.' 6 Our readers will perhaps be curious to see an illustration of the 'rambling style.' We will give one from our author, which will also afford us an opportunity of pointing out another danger, against which a teacher adopting the system will have to guard— the danger of connecting together facts, which have no proper connection, by an incidental, possibly an imperfect, resemblance or analogy. 6 He supposes a soap-bubble to be blown from the end of a tube adapted to the purpose, in the presence of a family circle, including some who have made a fair proficiency in the mathematics, while others have only, as yet, laughed and chatted with philosophy:' and suggests that such questions as the following may be put to the group,' with the bubble suspended, and the tube adroitly twirled, it is asked, What is now the figure of this bubble? it is a flattened sphere;' (this, en passant, is an ambiguous expression, for want of the addition, at the poles) 'called?—an oblate spheroid. What oblate spheroid can you think of, which owes its flattened figure to the very same cause that has changed this bubble from a prolate to an oblong form? The earth. And what is that cause? The twirling it. Then this earth of ours is an oblate spheroid; or we may call it a bubble, blown in molten granite, and spinning on its axis, while yet soft; but now the bubble is motionless, and the superfluous fluid, which had encircled its equatorial region, subsides, and forms a big drop, pendant at the southern pole. But do the two poles form arcs of the same sort? No, the upper arc is a mere open ellipsis; the lower tends to a point: like?-a chain suspended, with a weight at the middle; but the upper arc is nearly like?—the extremity or turn of the orbit of a comet.' (p. 320, 321.) Here we have some fanciful and erroneous analogies. The molten granite,' of which our author supposes the earth to consist, has no resemblance to a soapbubble, consisting of a portion of elastic air enclosed in film. Nor is there any proper connection between the figure assumed by the bubble when it has become stationary, and the orbit of a comet revolving round the sun. The physical principles applicable to the two cases are wholly distinct. There is one passage in this chapter which we cannot pass by without observation. Far better is it to allow young people to laugh at the uproarious humour of Mr. Quickly's guests, than to let them sip Circe's cup from the hand of certain of our modern poets,' (p. 334.) This is true; but we see no reason |