of a very few things, such as are placed within the range of our senses, without the use of language; but that language is the only medium, by which anything, prior to our own memory and experience or beyond our own vision, can be made known to us. Although, therefore, the words which our language is said to contain, seem to be many; yet when we think of all the relations of human life,-domestic, business, and social;-of the countless objects in the different kingdoms of nature, with their connexions and dependencies;-of the sciences, which have been founded upon them, and of the arts, to which they have been made subservient;-of all, in fine, external to ourselves, within the circle of time and beneath the arch of heaven; and of our own conscious hopes, fears, desires, to which that arch is no boundary; we shall see, at once, that the words of our language, numerous as they are, are only as one to infinity, compared with the number of the objects to which they are daily applied. And yet these words are sufficient not only to present us with an image and a record of past and present existences, but they are capable of outrunning the course of time, and describing the possibilities of the future, and of transcending the limits of reality and portraying the fancy-peopled worlds, created by the imagination. And, what is still more wonderful, is, that with the aid of these comparatively few words, we can designate and touch, as it were with the finger, any fact or event in this universe of facts and events, or parcel out any groups of them, from tens to tens of myriads; or we can note any period on the dial-plate of by-gone centuries, just as easily as we refer to the hours of the passing day. Now to accomplish this, it is obvious, that language must be susceptible of combinations indefinitely numerous; that most of its single words must assume different meanings, in different collocations, and that phrases, capable of expressing any one, or any millions of these facts, vicissitudes, relations, must be absolutely inexhaustible. Then, again, language has various, strongly marked forms, as colloquial, philosophical, poetical, devotional; and in each of these divisions, whatever subject we wish to separate from the rest, language can carve it out and display it distinctly and by itself, for our examination. It handles the most abstruse relations and affinities, and traces the most subtile analogies to their vanishing point; or, with equal ease, it condenses the most universal principles into brief sentences, or, if we please, into single words. Hence, in using it, to express any greater or smaller part of what is perceived by the senses, by intellect, or by genius, the the two conditions are, that we must discern, mentally, what individual object or quality, or what combinations of objects and qualities, we wish to specify; and then we must select the words

and form the phrases,-or volumes, if need be,-which will depict or designate by name, the individual objects we mean, or will draw a line round the combination of objects we wish to exhibit and describe. All true use of language, therefore, necessarily involves a mental act of adjustment, measure, precision, pertinency; otherwise it cannot fix the extent or gauge the depth of any subject. Language is to be selected and applied to the subject-matter, whether that subject-matter be business, history, art or consciousness, just as a surveyor applies his chain to the measurement of areas, or as an artist selects his colors to portray the original. But what must be the result, if the surveyor knows nothing of the length of the chain he uses, and if the artist selects his colors by chance, and knows not to what parts he applies them?

Hence, the acquisition of language consists far less in mastering words as individuals, than it does in adjusting their applications to things, in sentences and phrases. And one great object

there are others not less important-of teaching the children in our schools to read, is that they may there commence this habit of adjustment, of specifying and delineating with precis ion, whatever is within the range of their knowledge and experience. All attempts, therefore, to teach language to children, are vain, which have not this constant reference to the subjectmatter, intended to be specified and described. If the thing signified is not present to the mind, it is impossible, that the language should be a measure, for, by the supposition, there is nothing to be measured. It becomes a mere hollow sound; and with this disadvantage, that, from the parade, which is made in administering the nothingness, the child is led to believe he has received something. The uselessness of such a process would seem to be enough, without the falsity. The fact, that many children may not be able to make great progress in this adjustment of words to things, so far from being any reply to this view of the subject, only renders it so much the more important, that what is done should be done rightly.

Notwithstanding the immense treasures of knowledge, accumulated, in the past six thousand years, and the immense difference between the learned men of our own, and of ancient times; yet no one denies that children are now brought into the world in the same state of ignorance, as they were before the flood. When born, only a single instinct is developed, that of appetite for food. Weeks pass, before the quickest of all the senses -the sight-takes note of any object. At about the age of a year, the faculty of language dimly appears. One after another, other powers bud forth; but it seems to be the opinion of the best metaphysicians, that the highest faculties of the intellect

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those which, in their full development and energy, make the lawgivers of the race, and the founders of moral dynastieshardly dawn before the age of twelve or fourteen years. yet, in many of the reading books, now in use, in the schools, the most pithy sayings of learned men; the aphorisms in which moralists have deposited a life of observation and experience; the maxims of philosophers, embodying the highest forms of intellectual truth, are set down as First Lessons for children ;as though, because a child was born after Bacon and Franklin, he could understand them of course. While a child is still engrossed with visible and palpable objects, while his juvenile playthings are yet a mystery to him, he is presented with some abstraction or generalization, just discovered, after the profoundest study of men and things, by some master intellect. But it mat ters not to children, how much knowledge or wisdom there may be in the world, on subjects foreign to themselves, until they have acquired strength of mind sufficient to receive and appropriate them. The only interest which a child has, in the attainments of the age, in which he is born, is, that they may be kept from him, until he has been prepared to receive them. Erudite and scientific men, for their own convenience, have formed summaries, digests, abstracts, of their knowledge, each sentence of which contains a thousand elements of truth, that had been mastered in detail; and, on inspection of these abbreviated forms, they are reminded of, not taught, the individual truths they contain. Yet these are given to children, as though they would call up in their minds the same ideas, which they suggest to their authors. But while children are subjected to the law of their Creator, that of being born in ignorance, their growth is the desideratum, which Education should supply, and their intellect cannot thrive upon what it does not understaud;-nay, more, the intellect carries as a burden whatever it does not assimilate as nourishment. An indispensable quality of a school book, then, is its adjustment to the power of the learner. No matter how far, or how little, advanced, from the starting point of ignorance, a child may be, the teacher and the book must go to him. And this is only saying, that he cannot proceed upon his journey from a point not yet reached, but must first go through the intermediate stages. A child must know individual objects of a species, before he can understand a name descriptive of the species itself. He must know particulars, before he can understand the relations of analogy or contrast between them; he must be accustomed to ideas of visible and tangible extension, before it is of any use to tell him of the height of the Alps or the length of the Amazon; he must have definite notions of weight, before he can understand the force

of gravitating planets; he must be acquainted with phenomena, before he can be instructed in the laws, which harmonize their conflicting appearances; and he must know something of the relations of men, before he is qualified to infer the duti spring from them.

Nor should the first lessons be simple and elementar regard to the subject only; but the language of the earliest o should be literal. All figurative or metaphorical expression based upon the literal, and can have no intelligible existenc without it. After a clear apprehension of the literal mea of words, there is a charm in their figurative applications ; cause a comparison is silently made between the figurative the literal meanings, and the resemblance perceived awakens a delightful emotion. And this pleasure is proportioned to the distinctness of the related ideas. But how can a child understand those figures of speech, where a part is put for the whole, or the whole for a part, when he knows nothing either of whole or part ;-where sensible objects are put for intelligible, or animate things for inanimate, when he is wholly ignorant of the subjects, likened or contrasted? How can there be any such thing as tautology to a child, who is unacquainted with what went before; or how can he perceive antithesis if both extremes are visible? In writings, beautiful from the richness of their suggestion. the tacit reference to collateral ideas is wholly lost; and yet it is the highest proof of a master, to interweave ideas with which pleasurable emotions have become associated. Hence, a child, put into reading lessons which are beyond his ability, not only reads with a dormant understanding, but all the faculties, productive of taste, refinement, elegance, beauty, are torpid also. The faculties being unemployed, the reading, which otherwise would have been a pleasure, becomes irksome and repulsive. There is another pernicious conse quence, inseparable from the practice of depositing, in the memory of children, those general and synoptical views, which they do not understand. It leads to an opposite extreme in instruc- t tion; for when children, whose memory only has been cultivated, i are really to be taught any subject with thoroughness, and for t practical application; it then becomes necessary to simplify and ( degrade it to the level of their feeble apprehension. But why cannot the faculties be strengthened by exercise, so that, in i process of time, they can master more difficult subjects, as well as to degrade subjects to the level of weak faculties?

In communicating the elements of knowledge to children, i there is, at first, but little danger of being too minute and par- } ticular. Expansion, explanation, illustration, circumlocution,-i all are necessary. But, as the child advances, less diffuseness

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is requisite. The prolix becomes concise. Different and more comprehensive words are used, or the same, in an enlarged signification. What was pulverized and examined in atoms, is

ollected and handled in masses. Care, however, is to be

at every step, in the first place, that what is presented to earuer should demand a conscious effort on his part, for hout such an effort, there will be no increase of strength; d, in the next place, that what is presented should be attaine by an effort, for without success, discouragement and de

will ensue. School books, however, are made for classes not for individual minds, and hence the best books will be **e precisely adapted to some minds than to others. This difference, it is the duty of the teacher to equalize, by giving more copious explanations to the dull and unintelligent, and by tasking the strong and apprehensive with more difficult questions, connected with the text. Every sentence will have related ideas of cause and effect, of what is antecedent, consequent or collateral, which may be explored to the precise extent, indicated by different abilities. The old Balearic islanders of the Mediterranean, famed among the ancients for being the best bowmen and slingsmen, in the then known world, had in this respect a true idea of Education. They placed the food of their children upon the branches of the trees, at different heights from the ground, according to age and proficiency, and when the children had dislodged it, by bow. or sling, they had their meals, but not before.

Tested by this criterion, are not many of the reading books in our schools, too elevated for the scholars? It seems generally to have been the object of the compilers of these books, to cull the most profound and brilliant passages, contained in a language, in which the highest efforts of learning, talent and genius have been embalmed. Had there been a rivalry, like that at the ancient Olympic games, where emulous nations, instead of individuals, had entered the classic lists, as competitors for renown, and our fame as a people had been staked upon our eloquent, school book miscellanies, we should have questioned the integrity of the umpire, had we not won the prize. Certainly from no ancient, probably from no other modern language, could such a selection of literary excellencies be made, as some of them exhibit;-demonstrative arguments on the most abstruse and recondite subjects, tasking the acuteness of practised logicians, and applicable only by them;-brilliant passages of parliamentary debates, whose force would be irresistible, provided only that one were familiar with all contemporary institutions and events;-scenes from dramas, beautiful if understood, but unintelligible without an acquaintance with heathen