t in a dull study, for a quarter,
or even a month. The experiment is worth something as a pleasant and
useful change, even if it is not permanently superior to the other."

It is indeed worth something. It is worth a great deal; and the teacher
who can devise and execute such plans, _understanding their real place
and value, and adhering steadily through them all, to the great object
which ought to engage his attention_, is in the almost certain road to
success as an instructer. What I wish is, not to discourage such
efforts; they ought to be encouraged to the utmost, but to have their
real nature and design, and the real secret of their success fully
understood, and to have the teacher, above all, take good care that all
his new plans are made, not the substitutes for the great objects which
he ought to keep steadily in view, but only the means by which he may
carry them into more full and complete effect.

In the case we are supposing however, we will imagine that the teacher
does not do this. He fancies that he has made an important discovery,
and begins to inquire whether the _principle_, as he calls it, cannot be
applied to some other studies. He goes to philosophizing upon it, and
can find many reasons why knowledge received through the ear makes a
more ready and lasting impression, than when it comes through the eye.
He tries to apply the method to Arithmetic and Geography, and in a short
time is forming plans for the complete metamorphosis of his school. When
engaged in hearing a recitation, his mind is distracted with his schemes
and plans; and instead of devoting his attention fully to the work he
may have in hand, his thoughts are wandering continually to new schemes
and fancied improvements, which agitate and perplex him, and which elude
his efforts to give them a distinct and definite form. He thinks he must
however, carry out his _principle_. He thinks of its applicability to a
thousand other cases. He revolves, over and over again in his mind,
plans for changing the whole arrangement of his school. He is again and
again lost in perplexity, his mind is engrossed and distracted, and his
present duties are performed with no interest, and consequently with
little spirit or success.

Now his error is in allowing a new idea, which ought only to have
suggested to him an agreeable change for a time, in one of his classes,
to swell itself into undue and exaggerated importance, and to draw off
his mind from what