onnected with it can ever come to his
knowledge without being classed with some of the others. It will be
disposed of according to the relation which it bears to the parts
already existing; and thus the whole texture will be regularly framed,
and every event will have its proper place, and be readily available for
future use. One part may be filled up and finished before another; but
the regular proportions of the whole remain undisturbed. The pupil has,
by the original outline and its several branches, got a date and a place
for every new fact which he may afterwards glean, either in his reading
or his conversation; and he has a place in which to put it, where it can
easily be found. When placed there, it is safe in the keeping of the
memory, and will always afterwards be at the command of the will.

The connection of these circumstances, with the principle in education
which we are at present endeavouring to illustrate, may not to some be
very apparent. We shall therefore take another example from a
circumstance similar to what occurs every day in ordinary life, and in
which the principle, in the hands of Nature, is abundantly conspicuous.
In the example we are here to give, she forms the several steps of the
classification in a number of hearers by _once_ reading a subject, very
similar to what she does successively in the mind of one individual by
_repeated_ readings.

Let us then suppose a teacher with two or three hundred pupils,
including every degree of mental capacity, from the youngest child who
is able to understand, up to his own classical assistant; and that he
reads to them the history of Joseph as given in the Book of Genesis. Let
us also suppose, that they all give him their best attention, and that
they all hear the narrative for the first time. Such an experiment, let
it be observed, has its parallel every day, in the church, in the class
room, and in the seminary; and similar effects to those we are about to
describe invariably take place in each of them.

When the teacher has read and concluded this lengthened exercise, it
will be found, that no two individuals among his hearers have acquired
the same amount of knowledge. Some will have received and retained more
of the circumstances, and some less, but no two, strictly speaking, will
be alike. Those whose minds were incapable of connecting the several
parts of the narrative into a whole, will retain what they have received
in disjointed groups and