NORMAL INSTITUTION. 97
galleries, and other accommodations for study and exercise, among which are five play-grounds, with suitable apparatus. Here the teachers freely mingle with their pupils, carefully superintending their modes of intercourse and the development of their disposi tions and affections, in what they expressively call the " uncovered school-room." I was delighted with their bright countenances, and the promptness and naivete which marked the replies of some of the youngest classes, to the questions of their teachers. The infant department comprises all under six years of age, and the juvenile, all from six to fourteen. There is also a school of industry for girls from ten years old and upwards, where the various uses of the needle, so inseparably connected with domestic comfort, are ad mirably taught. Moral, physical, and religious culture are strenuously combined with the intellectual, in the system here established, and a spirit of happiness and order seemed to reign, unmarked by the severity of discipline. The Rev. Mr. Cunningham, formerly a professor in one of the Colleges of the United States, is the respected Rector of the Institution ; and it owes much to the munificent patronage of David Stow, Esq., author of a volume entitled " The Training System," which contains an exposition of the plan here pursued, and valuable hints on elementary education in general. The teachers, who have issued from this Normal Seminary, will have the opportunity of widely exem plifying its system ; for they are found not only in different counties of Scotland, England, and Ireland, 7
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