er understood. Every exercise and
every operation in the school will then be made to "tell;" and every
moment of the pupils' attendance will be improved. In these
circumstances, we are far within the limits of the truth when we say,
that more real substantial education will then be communicated in one
month, than it has been usual to receive by the labours of a whole year.

From what has been already ascertained, we are fully warranted in making
the following remarks.

1. From the above facts we can readily ascertain the cause, why some
exercises employed in education are so much relished by the young, and
so efficient in giving strength and elasticity to the mind; while
others, on the contrary are so inefficient, so irksome, and sometimes so
intolerable. Every exercise that tends to produce active thought,--the
"reiteration of ideas,"--is natural, and therefore, not only promotes
healthful mental vigour, but is also exciting and delightful; while, on
the contrary, whenever the mind is fettered by the mere decyphering of
words, or the repeating of sounds, without reiterating ideas, the
exercise is altogether unnatural, and must of course be irritating to
the child, and barren of good.

2. By a due consideration of the above principles, we see the reason why
mental arithmetic, though it may not communicate any knowledge, is yet
productive of considerable mental vigour. These exercises compel the
young to a species of voluntary thought, the reiteration in the mind of
the powers of numbers; and although the result of the particular
calculations which are then made, may never again be of any service to
the pupil, yet the consequent exercise of mind is beneficial. It should
never be forgotten, however, that this exercise of mind upon _numbers_
is altogether an artificial operation, and is on this account, neither
so efficient nor so pleasant as the reiteration of moral or physical
truths. The same degree of mental exercise, brought into operation upon
some useful fact, where the imagination as well as the understanding,
can take a part, would at once be more natural, more efficient, more
pleasant, and more useful.

3. From the nature and operation of the above principle, also, we can
perceive in what the efficiency of Pestalozzi's "Exercises on Objects,"
consists.--When a child is required to tell you the colour and the
consistence of milk, qualities which have all along been familiar to
him, it conveys to him no knowled