mencing
the labour of tuition, but that every system of tuition in proportion
as it approaches to a good one will inevitably involve the generation
of this love of knowledge concurrently with the generation of
knowledge itself. Most melancholy are the cases which have come under
our immediate notice of good faculties wholly lost to their possessor
and an incurable disgust for literature and knowledge founded to our
certain knowledge solely on the stupidity and false methods of the
teacher, who alike in what he knew or did _not_ know was incapable of
connecting one spark of pleasurable feeling with any science, by
leading his pupils' minds to re-act upon the knowledge he attempted to
convey. Being thus important, how shall a love of knowledge be
created? According to the Experimentalist, first of all (p. 97--to the
word 'zest' in p. 107) by combining the sense of obvious _utility_
with all the elementary exercises of the intellect:--secondly (from p.
108--to the word 'rock' in p. 114) by matching the difficulties of the
learner exactly with his capacity:--thirdly (from p. 114--to the word
'attention' in p. 117) by connecting with the learner's progress the
sense of continual success:--fourthly (from p. 117--to the word
'co-operation' in p. 121) by communicating clear, vivid and accurate
conceptions. The first means is illustrated by a reference to the art
of learning a language--to arithmetic--to surveying, and to the
writing of 'themes.' Can any boy, for instance, reconcile himself to
the loathsome effort of learning '_Propria quae maribus_' by any [but]
the dimmest sense of its future utility? No, we answer with the
Experimentalist: and we go farther even than the Experimentalist is
disposed to do (p. 98); for we deny the existence of any future
utility. We, the reviewer of this book, at eight years of age, though
even then passionately fond of study and disdainful of childish
sports, passed some of the most wretched and ungenial days of our life
in 'learning by _heart_,' as it is called (oh! most ironical
misnomer!), _Propria quae maribus_, '_Quae genus_,' and '_As in
praesenti_,' a three-headed monster worse than Cerberus: we _did_ learn
them _ad unguem_; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling to
our memory as ineradicably as the golden lines of AEschylus or
Shakspeare. And what was our profit from all this loathsome labour,
and the loathsome heap of rubbish thus deposited in the memory?
Attend, if you plea