not '_hold
together_' when poured from a vessel, but 'forms drops.' Now, since it
forms drops, it _has cohesion_, and the criterion is wrongly taken; In
fact, the same thing appears in that the liquid, even in pouring out,
does hold together in a stream, and a stream that experiments with
liquid jets show it really requires considerable force to break up.

Finally, Mr. Calkins's book, in the bands of discerning and skillful
teachers, can be made the instrument of a great deal of right and
valuable discipline for primary classes; but without some guarding and
help from the teacher's own thought, it will not always do the best
work, nor in the best way. It is an approach to a good book for early
mental development; but it is not the consummation to be desired. Many
of its suggestions and patterns of lessons are excellent; but there is
too large a lack of true consecution of topics, of accuracy of
expression, and of really natural method of handling the subjects. We
say this with no unkindly feeling toward the attempt or the author, but
because, though no matter by how fortuitous circumstances, it comes to
us as in this country the _first effort_ toward a certain new style of
books and subjects, and certain more rational teaching; and we hold it,
as being the privilege of teachers whose time may be too much consumed
in applying, to criticise minutely, as no less our right and duty, and
that of every independent man, to recognize and point out wherein this
new venture meets, or fails to meet, the new and positive demand of the
pupils and the teachers in our time. If, in a degree, the working out
shows defects such as we have named, is it not yet a question, whether
we have in the book an illustration 'how this system of training may be
applied to the entire course of common school education'?--to say
nothing now of the question whether, even in its best form, it is a
system that ought to be so applied.

After the author of a book for young learners is sure of the
comprehensibility of his subjects, and the accuracy of his ideas and
expressions of them, the highest need--and one the lack of which is
fatal to true educative value--is that of a natural and true synthesis
and consecution of the successive steps of fact and principle that are
to be presented. We would not be understood that every successive lesson
and every act of voluntary thinking must thus be consecutive: to say
this, would be to confine the mind to one stud