be Egeria's substitute for it; and she would, I think, do
well to write those words over the porch of her school.

In the ordinary elementary school a fair amount of acting goes on
in the infant department, and an occasional attempt is made, in
one of the higher classes of the upper department, to act a scene
from Shakespeare or an episode in English history. But during
the five years or so of school life which intervene between the
infant department and "Standard VI," the dramatic instinct is
as a rule entirely neglected; and the consequent outgrowth of
self-consciousness in the children is too often a fatal obstacle to
the success of the spasmodic attempts at dramatisation which are
made in the higher classes.

In Utopia "acting" is a vital part of the school life of every class,
and every subject that admits of dramatic treatment is systematically
dramatised. In History, for example, when the course of their study
brings them to a suitable episode, the children set to work to
dramatise it. With this end in view, they consult some advanced
text-book or historical novel or other book of reference, and
having studied with care the particular chapter in which they are
interested, and having decided among themselves who are to play what
parts, they proceed to make up their own dialogues, and their own
costumes and other accessories. They then act the scene, putting
their own interpretation on the various parts, and receiving
the stimulus and guidance of Egeria's sympathetic and moeutic
criticism. Their class-mates and the rest of the children in the main
room look on, with their history books open in front of them, and
applaud; and, by gradually familiarising themselves with the various
parts, qualify themselves half-unconsciously to act as under-studies
in the particular scene, and in due course to play their own parts as
interpreters of some other historical episode. I know of no treatment
of history which is so effective as this for young children. The
actual knowledge of the facts of history which a child carries away
with him from an elementary school cannot well be large, and is, in
many cases, a negligible quantity. But the child who has once acted
history will always be interested in it, and being interested in it
will be able, without making a formal study of it, to absorb its
spirit, its atmosphere, and the more significant of its facts. Nor
do the advantages of the dramatic treatment of history end with the