een destroyed; irritation, and confusion, and
mental weakness, would have been the consequence; and altogether,
matters would not have been made better, but worse, by the attempt.

Another inference, which we think may legitimately be drawn from the
above examples, is this, that although Nature prompts the child silently
to throw off or reject that which the mind at the time cannot receive,
yet it would be better for the child if no more had been pressed upon
him than he was capable of receiving. The very rejection of any portion
of the mental food presented for acceptance, must in some measure tend
to dissipate the mind, and exhaust its strength. This we think is
demonstrated by the fact, that the child had to listen for _an hour_,
and yet retained on his memory no more than experience shews us could
have been much more successfully communicated in _five minutes_.

This leads us to another remark, almost equally important; which is,
that the want of classification among the children, will not only hurt
them, but tend to waste the time, and unnecessarily to exhaust the
strength of the teacher. The teacher's success with any one child, is
not to be estimated by the pains he takes, or the extent of his labour,
but by the amount of knowledge actually retained by the child. To employ
an hour's labour, therefore, to communicate that knowledge which could
with much better effect be given in five minutes, is both unreasonable
and improper; and every one who will for a moment think on the subject
must see, that a lesson, which in that short space of time conveyed the
whole of the knowledge that the pupils had been able to pick up during
the hour's exercise, would leave the teacher eleven-twelfths of his time
to benefit the other classes. The nurseryman follows this plan with his
trees, and with evident success, both in saving time, and room, and
labour. When he sows his acorns, one square yard will contain more
plants than will ultimately occupy an acre. It is only as they increase
in growth, that they are thinned out and transplanted; and such should
be the case in communicating knowledge to children. To attempt to teach
the whole history at once, is like sowing the whole acre with acorns,
and thinning them out during a quarter of a century. The loss of seed in
this case is the least of the evils; for the ground would be robbed of
its strength, nine-tenths of it would be rendered unnecessarily useless
during a large portion of