ng the work of
the whole class to a higher level. But the laggards are as far from
being discouraged by their failure as are the more advanced scholars
from being puffed up by their success. From the highest to the
lowest, all are doing their best and all are happy together.

From morals to manners the transition is obvious and direct. Be the
explanation what it may, the whole atmosphere of this school is
evidently fatal to selfishness and self-assertion; and in such an
atmosphere good manners will spring up spontaneously among the
children, and will scarcely need to be inculcated, for the essence of
courtesy is forgetfulness of self and consideration of others in the
smaller affairs of social life. The general bearing of the Utopian
children hits the happy mean between aggressive familiarity and
uncouth shyness,--each a form of self-conscious egoism,--just as
their bearing in school hits the happy mean between laxity and undue
constraint. They welcome the stranger as a friend, take his goodwill
for granted, take him into their confidence, and show him, tactfully
and unostentatiously, many pretty courtesies. And they do all this,
not because they have been drilled into doing it, but because it is
their nature to do it, because their overflowing sympathy and
goodwill must needs express themselves in and through the channels of
courtesy and kindness. There is no trace of sullen self-repression in
this school. Accustomed (as we shall presently see) to express
themselves in various ways, the children cannot entertain kindly
feelings without seeking some vent for them. But whether their kindly
feelings lead them to dance in a ring round their own inspector,
singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," or to escort another
visitor, on his departure, through the playground with their
arms in his, their tact,--which is the outcome, partly of their
self-forgetfulness, partly of the training which their perceptive
faculties are always receiving,--is unfailing, and they never allow
friendliness to degenerate into undue familiarity.

There is one other feature of the school life which I cannot pass
over. I have never been in a school in which the love of what is
beautiful in Nature is so strong or so sincere as in this. The
aesthetic sense of the Utopian child has not been deliberately
trained, but it has been allowed, and even encouraged, to unfold
itself; and the appeal that beauty makes to the heart meets in
consequence with a rea