towards it. Now this is
really no exaggerated illustration of the matter in hand, for in both
cases the principle of individuation, so carefully guarded and enforced
by Nature, is equally outraged; and it is only where, by some means or
other, a remedy for the evil accidentally occurs, that the result in the
case of the alphabet, is not exactly the same as it would have been in
the case of the classics above supposed. The writer once saw in a Sunday
school, where the children were taught twice each Sabbath, a class in
which some of the children had attended for upwards of two years, and
were still in their alphabet; and if the same mode had been pursued,
there is little doubt that they would have been in it yet.

The remedy for this evil is obvious. Instead of confounding the eye and
the mind of the child, by rapidly parading twenty-six, or fifty-four
forms, continuously and without intermission before the pupil, the
letters ought to be presented to the child singly, or at most by two at
a time; and these two should be rendered familiar, both in name and in
form, before another character is introduced. When a few of the more
conspicuous letters have become familiar, another is to be brought
forward, and the child may be made to amuse himself, by picking out from
a page of a book, all the letters he has learned, naming them, and if
necessary describing them to a companion or a sub-monitor as they occur.
Or he may be set down by himself, with a waste leaf from an old book, or
pamphlet, or newspaper, to prick with a pin the new letter or letters
last taught him; or, as an introduction to his writing, he may be made
to score them gently with ink from a fine tipped pen. In these
exercises, and all others which are in their nature similar, the
principle of individuation is acknowledged and acted upon; and therefore
it is, that a child will, by their means, acquire an acquaintance with
the letters in an exceedingly short time, and, which is of still greater
importance, without irritation or trouble. These methods may sometimes
be rendered yet more effective, by the teacher applying the catechetical
exercise to this comparatively dry and rather forbidding part of a
child's education. It proceeds upon the principle of describing each
letter, and attaching its name to the description, such as "round o,"
"spectacle g," "top dotted i," &c. as in the "Classified Alphabet." The
teacher has thus an opportunity of exercising the child's