d the attempt to carry this fully
into effect must necessarily be dangerous to the health and efficacy of
the organ." It would be wrong, therefore, to deduct less than a
half-hour from Scott's estimate, for even the oldest pupils in our
highest schools; leaving five hours as the limit of real mental effort
for them, and reducing this, for all younger pupils, very much farther.

It is vain to suggest, at this point, that the application of Scott's
estimate is not fair, because the mental labor of our schools is
different in quality from his, and therefore less exhausting. It differs
only in being more exhausting. To the robust and affluent mind of the
novelist, composition was not, of itself, exceedingly fatiguing; we know
this from his own testimony; he was able, moreover, to select his own
subject, keep his own hours, and arrange all his own conditions of
labor. And on the other hand, when we consider what energy and genius
have for years been brought to bear upon the perfecting of our
educational methods,--how thoroughly our best schools are now graded
and systematized, until each day's lessons become a Procrustes-bed to
which all must fit themselves,--how stimulating the apparatus of prizes
and applauses, how crushing the penalties of reproof and
degradation,--when we reflect, that it is the ideal of every school,
that the whole faculties of every scholar should be concentrated upon
every lesson and every recitation from beginning to end, and that
anything short of this is considered partial failure,--it is not
exaggeration to say, that the daily tension of brain demanded of
children in our best schools is altogether severer, while it lasts, than
that upon which Scott based his estimate. But Scott is not the only
authority in the case; let us ask the physiologists.

So said Horace Mann, before us, in the days when the Massachusetts
school system was in process of formation. He asked the physiologists,
in 1840, and in his next Report printed the answers of three of the most
eminent. The late Dr. Woodward, of Worcester, promptly said, that
children under eight should never be confined more than one hour at a
time, nor more than four hours a day; and that, if any child showed
alarming symptoms of precocity, it should be taken from school
altogether. Dr. James Jackson, of Boston, allowed the children four
hours' schooling in winter and five in summer, but only one hour at a
time, and heartily expressed his "detestation