this branch, nothing but superior excellence or very
extraordinary exertions will secure the favorable reception of a work.
Examine all that your predecessors have done before you. Obtain,
whatever may be the trouble and expense, all other text-books on the
subject, and examine them thoroughly. If you see that you can make a
very decided advance on all that has been done, and that the public will
probably submit to the inconvenience and expense of a change to secure
the result of your labors, go forward slowly and carefully in your work,
no matter how much investigation, how much time and labor it may
require. The more difficulty you may find in gaining the eminence, the
less likely will you be to be followed by successful competitors.

9. Consider, in forming your text-book, not merely the whole subject on
which you are to write, but also look extensively and thoroughly at the
institutions throughout the country, and consider carefully the
character of the teachers by whom you expect it to be used. Sometimes a
man publishes a text-book, and when it fails on trial, he says "it is
because they did not know how to use it. The book in itself was good.
The whole fault was in the awkwardness and ignorance of the teacher."
How absurd! As if, to make a good text-book, it was not as necessary to
adapt it to teachers as to scholars. A _good text-book, which the
teachers for whom it was intended did not know how to use!!_ In other
words, a good contrivance, but entirely unfit for the purpose for which
it was intended.

10. Lastly, in every new plan, consider carefully whether its success in
your hands, after you have tried it and found it successful, be owing to
its novelty and to your own special interest in it, or to its own innate
and intrinsic superiority. If the former, use it so long as it will
last, simply to give variety and interest to your plans. Recommend it in
conversation or in other ways to teachers with whom you are acquainted,
not as a wonderful discovery, which is going to change the whole science
of education, but as one method among others which may be introduced
from time to time to relieve the monotony of the teacher's labors.

In a word, do not go away from the established institutions of our
country, or deviate from the great objects which are at present, and
ought continually to be pursued by them, without great caution,
circumspection, and deliberate inquiry. But, within these limits,
exercise ingenuity