ently meets the
child half way in its progress, by actually adopting the faults and errors
herself in her replies. So that when the little beginner in the use of
language, as he wakes up in his crib, and stretching out his hands to his
mother says, "I want _to get up_" she comes to take him, and replies, her
face beaming with delight, "My little darling! you shall _get up_;" thus
filling his mind with happiness at the idea that his mother is not only
pleased that he attempts to speak, but is fully satisfied, and more than
satisfied, with his success.

The result is, that in learning to walk and to talk, children always
go forward with alacrity and ardor. They practise continually and
spontaneously, requiring no promises of reward to allure them to effort,
and no threats of punishment to overcome repugnance or aversion. It might
be too much to say that the rapidity of their progress and the pleasure
which they experience in making it, are owing wholly to the commendation
and encouragement they receive--for other causes may co-operate with these.
But it is certain that these influences contribute very essentially to the
result. There can be no doubt at all that if it were possible for a mother
to stop her child in its efforts to learn to walk and to talk, and explain
to it, no matter how kindly, all its shortcomings, failures, and mistakes,
and were to make this her daily and habitual practice, the consequence
would be, not only a great diminution of the ardor and animation of the
little pupil, in pressing forward in its work, but also a great retardation
in its progress.

_Example of the other Method_.

Let us now, for the more full understanding of the subject, go to the other
extreme, and consider a case in which the management is as far as possible
removed from that above referred to. We can not have a better example
than the method often adopted in schools and seminaries for teaching
composition; in other words, the art of expressing one's thoughts in
written language--an art which one would suppose to be so analogous to
that of learning to talk--that is, to express one's thoughts in _oral_
language--that the method which was found so eminently successful in the
one would be naturally resorted to in the other. Instead of that, the
method often pursued is exactly the reverse. The pupil having with infinite
difficulty, and with many forebodings and anxious fears, made his first
attempt, brings it to his teacher. The