TO DO UP MAPS.

Sponge the cotton or linen, stretch it out and tack it down smooth. Sponge the map on both sides. Make a thick flour paste with a little alum in it Put this on the back of the map. In wetting the cloth and map, care should be taken to have it evenly wet, so that it will dry without rumpling.

When you put the map on the cloth, lay another piece of paper over it, and press it out smooth, beginning at the center. When dry, size it. The white of an egg will do. Or, take gum arabic, and one-third as much isinglass, and dissolve it in very hot water. Put it on with a brush. Then varnish the map with mastic varnish.

INK.

Prof. Webster's Receipt.-Soak half a pound of nutgalls in three pints of rain water, three ounces of gum arabic in half a pint of warm rain water, three ounces of copperas in half a pint of warm rain water, let them stand forty-eight hours and then mix them.

This is very nearly the same with the receipt for "Exchequer Ink.".

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

JAEGER'S ZOOLOGY-This is a little treatise on Zoology, by Prof. Jaeger, formerly of Princeton College, now residing in Providence. John H. Willard, Esq., Chairman of the School Committee of North Providence, says of it in his report-" A little work on Zoology, by Prof. Jaeger, of Providence, I highly esteem, and use as a kind of pastime to fill casual intervals. Its convenience for school use far surpasses any thing of the kind. Its style is easy and attractive, and above all, its terminology rendered into English"-D. Appleton & Co.

COMSTOCK'S PHILOSOPHY. Revised edition.

COMSTOCK'S GEOLOGY. These two popular works have been thoroughly revised, and the latter almost rewritten. Of the Philosophy, two editions have been published in Great Britain, and with high commendations. Very few school books on these topics have met with greater success. They are adapted to the present state of the sciences, and contain all the latest discoveries.-Pratt, Woodford & Co.

THE RHODE ISLAND EDUCATIONAL MAGAZINE will be published monthly. All pamphlets, exchange papers, or communications, should be addressed to E. R. POTTER, Providence, R. I. Letters, (post paid) may be directed to Providence or Kingston. Terms, 50 cents per annum, in advance.

The following decision in the case referred to below, will be found in the April number of our Magazine. The decision of the Supreme Court will be found in our June number.

CASE OF SCHOOL DISTRICT No. 3, NORTH PROVIDENCE.

In the case of the appeal of the former Trustees of said District from a vote of the School Committee of the town, passed January 24, 1852, refusing to allow certain bills presented by said Trustees.

This case was stated and decided by the Commissioner on March 23, 1952, and an order directed to the Town Treasurer of North Providence, for the payment of the bills.

The Supreme Court subsequently decided that said order was illegal, and that the decision should have been certified to the School Commitee, for them to carry into effect.

On the 5th of June, 1852, a notice was issued to the School Committee to show cause why an order should not be made for them to carry into effect said decision; and on the 12th of June, Messrs. Sisson and Willard, on behalf of said Committee, appeared and asked for a further hearing in the case, which was allowed-the old Trustees objecting to the right to allow said rehearing.

The Committtee contend that the certificate of Cole, though general in its form, was by their practice limited to a grammar school, and that this practice was generally understood; that the sub-com

mittee had power to annul a certificate; that their letter did annul it, and that the whole committee subsequently approved it.

The other facts, points of law and arguments, are fully stated in the former decision.

On further consideration, I am of opinion that all the points of law before stated and decided, were rightly decided; and further, that the Commissioner has a right to allow a rehearing for good cause, in his discretion ;-but so much of said decision as allows the bill of Miss Smith, is reconsidered and reversed, it not being in the power of the Commissioner to dispense with the teachers' having a legal certificate.

And so much of said decision as relates to the bill of said Cole, is hereby confirmed, and the School Committee of said town are hereby requested to draw an order on the town treasurer of said town for the payment thereof, being forty-eight dollars and twelve cents, to said Cole-or in case of said former trustees having paid the same to said Cole, then to said trustees. E R. POTTER, Commissioner of Public Schools. Approved-RICHARD W. GREENE, C. J. S. Court.

August 14, 1852.

From the British and Foreign Review.

1. Stories of the Gods and Heroes of Greece, told by Berthold Niebuhr to his Son. Translated from the German. Edited by Sarah Austin. J. W. Parker, London, 1843.

2. The Home Treasury. Edited by Felix Summerly. London: J. Cundall, 1843.

3. Puss in Boots. Illustrated by Otto Speckter. London: J. Murray, 1843.

Concluded from page 328.]

By children's books are generally meant books which children voluntarily read, and to those our observations are confined. We perceive with pleasure, that a reaction is taking place in favor of the only class of books which we admit to be necessarily appropriate to children-we mean fairy tales, or to borrow from the German the more comprehensive word for wonderful stories and legends-Marchen. The series of little books included under the title of "The Home Treasury," which appears at the head of this article, is one indication of this change, and provides well and usefully for a demand which is rapidly increasing. The tales that have hitherto appeared, are edited with good taste and judgment, and are ren

dered in every way attractive to the eye; their real charm is, however, deeper and far more valuable. The announcement of this series will explain its intention; in its general spirit we entirely agree-how far we may differ, with respect to the value of illustrations, will appear from our previous remarks. "The character of most children's books published during the last quarter of a century, is fairly typified in the name of Peter Parley, which the writers of some hundreds of them have assumed. The books themselves have been addressed, after a narrow fashion, almost entirely to the cultivation of the understanding of children. The many tales sung or said from time immemorial, which appealed to the other, and certainly not less important, elements of a little child's mind, its fancy, imagination, sympathies, affections, are almost all gone out of memory, and are scarcely to be obtained. 'Little Red Riding Hood,' and other fairy tales hallowed to children's use, are now turned into ribaldry as satires for men; as for the creation of a new fairy tale or touching ballad, such a thing is unheard of. That the influence of all this is hurtful to children, the conductor of this series firmly believes. He has practical experience of it every day in his own family, and he doubts not that there are many others who entertain the same opinions as himself. He proposes at least to give some evidence of his belief, and to produce a series of works, the character of which may be briefly described as anti-Peter-Parleyism. Some will be new works, some new combinations of old materials, and some reprints, carefully cleared of impurities, without deterioration to the points of the story. All will be illustrated, but not after the usual fashion of children's books, in which it seems to be assumed that the lowest kind of art is good enough to give first impressions to a child. In the present series, though the statement may perhaps excite a smile, the illustrations will be selected from the works of Raffealle, Titian, Hans, Holbein, and other old masters. Some of the best modern artists have kindly promised their aid in creating a taste for beauty in little children."

Let no one imagine we consider it a matter of pride or congratulation, that fairy tales lose their magic power over the mature man. On the contrary, it is because it is the exclusive prerogative, the divine gift of childhood, wholly to enjoy and half to believe these delightful fictions, that we shall ever condemn the presumptuous rebellion against nature, which the withholding of them supposes. We look upon children who have been deprived of this poetry of infancy as defrauded not only of an immense pleasure, never to be regained, but of one important part of their internal development, which, if checked in its natural season, is destroyed forever. The idea that

children will, in the face of their daily experience, continue to believe in talking birds and flying dragons, in giants that eat little boys, or fairies that change mice into footmen, is too absurd to be answered; there is not the smallest danger of the kind. But there is a danger that children brought up to imagine they know what is true, and to have no sympathy with the invisible, should end by feeling nothing and believing nothing but objects of sense.

We do not find in fairy tales the smallest danger of injury to the reasoning faculty, the paramount importance of which we fully acknowledge. The inductive faculty, so far from being weak, is peculiarly strong in childhood;-why?--because their learning and experience enables them to judge of the truth or falsehood of the data on which they reason? Not a whit; they know nothing of the kind; they may be told this or that, but all the phenomena of nature are new to them, and may, for aught they know, be new to the world-that is supernatural. The clearness and precision of their inferences arise wholly from other causes. They have no interest and prejudice-no favor and no false shame; in their natural state they go straight on to a consequence, with a fearless justness which we have often admired-admired with a melancholy feeling that it could not last. It is the world and its vile realities, its interests and its constraints, and not fairy tales, that stunt and distort the noblest of all our faculties. The robbing us of the one next to it in dignity—imagination—will not help

us.

We reluctantly notice an objection, which will probably be made, to permitting children to read books written for men; we mean on the score of what is called their impropriety.-There is little use in reasoning with persons who believe that virtue is to be secured by enfeebling the mind and character, or whose powers of observation and deduction are so small as to render them inaccessible to evidence. Those who have duly reflected on the nature of a child's mind, on the subjects which are fitted to excite its interest, and to which alone it can, by its organization and the range of its experience, be awake, will need no evidence, indeed, to convince them that these timorous and misplaced precautions are not only useless, but pernicious;-useless, inasmuch as a young child in its natural state is utterly unconscious of, and indifferent to, the class of subjects which are supposed by its elders, (from their own lamentable self-knowledge,) to have such dangerous attractions for it; and pernicious, because the whole force of that attraction, whatever it be, is thus reserved for the moment at which it is really felt, and consequently really dangerous. It will not be pretended, that, as far as boys are concerned, it is