it better than do parents, or, in fact, at
all? This is the way the nursery develops this and kindred ideas, and if
the child be yet too young for its own comprehension of the most obvious
truths of Natural Theology, then better defer the subject, or at least
cease to call the nursery method by too swelling a name!

As to arrangement of topics, though the geographical lessons properly
come late, as they stand, the idea of _place_, as well as those of
_weight and size_, all belong earlier than the positions they are found
in; and _number_, later. Such mental anachronisms as talking of _solids_
before the attempt has been made to impart or insure the idea of a
solid, should, where practicable, be avoided; and more notably, such as
bringing a subsequent and complex idea, like that of 'square measure,'
before scarcely any one of the elementary ideas it involves, such as
_measure, standard_, or even _length or size_, is presented. As to the
substance of the teaching, we will indicate a few points that raise a
question on perusal of them. What will the little learner gain, if the
teacher follows the book in this instance? 'Where is the skin of the
apple? _On_ its surface.'' This is in the lesson for 'developing the
idea' of surface. When, by and by, the young mathematician gets the true
idea of a surface, as extension in two dimensions only, hence, without
thickness, then will follow this surprising result, that the whole
thickness of the apple-skin is _on_--outside--the apple's surface, and
hence, is nowhere: a singular converse of the teaching of those smart
gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own
satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness!
In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of
perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after,
unfortunately confounds the _perpendicular_ with the _vertical_--a bad
way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific
ideas, as they should be, definite as well as practically useful. If we
judge by the brevity and incompleteness of the lesson on 'Developing
ideas of Drawing'(!), ideas of that particular 'stripe' must be scarce.
The Object Lessons at the close of the book we find generally very good
models of such exercises, clear and to the purpose. Once in a while
there is a _lapsus_, as in this: The criterion of a _liquid_ is
presented as being in the circumstances that it does