s, the chances of happiness according to the new and
old tables of interest.

Sectary-metaphysicians, if any of this description should ever deign
to open a book that has a _practical_ title, will, we fear, be
disappointed in our chapters on Memory--Imagination and Judgment. They
will not find us the partisans of any system, and they will probably
close the volume with supercilious contempt. We endeavour to console
ourselves by the hope, that men of sense and candour will be more
indulgent, and will view with more complacency an attempt to collect
from all metaphysical writers, those observations, which can be
immediately of practical use in education. Without any pompous
pretensions, we have given a sketch of what we have been able to
understand and ascertain of the history of the mind. On some
subjects, the wisest of our readers will at least give us credit for
knowing that we are ignorant.

We do not set that high value upon Memory, which some preceptors are
inclined to do. From all that we have observed, we believe that few
people are naturally deficient in this faculty; though in many it may
have been so injudiciously cultivated as to induce the spectators to
conclude, that there was some original defect in the retentive power.
The recollective power is less cultivated than it ought to be, by the
usual modes of education: and this is one reason why so few pupils
rise above mediocrity. They lay up treasures for moths to corrupt;
they acquire a quantity of knowledge, they learn a multitude of words
by rote, and they cannot produce a single fact, or a single idea, in
the moment when it is wanted: they collect, but they cannot combine.
We have suggested the means of cultivating the inventive faculty at
the same time that we store the memory; we have shown, that on the
order in which ideas are presented to the mind, depends the order in
which they will recur to the memory; and we have given examples from
the histories of great men and little children, of the reciprocal
assistance which the memory and the inventive powers afford each
other.

In speaking of Taste, it has been our wish to avoid prejudice and
affectation. We have advised that children should early be informed,
that the principles of taste depend upon casual, arbitrary, variable
associations. This will prevent our pupils from falling into the
vulgar errour of being amazed and _scandalized_ at the tastes of other
times and other nations. The beauties of n