f the pupils continues. They get longer lessons and
make fewer mistakes than they did by the old method. Now, in
speculating on this subject, the teacher reasons very justly that it is
of no consequence whether the pupil receives his knowledge through the
eye or through the ear; whether they study in solitude or in company.
The point is to secure their progress in learning to spell the words of
the English language, and as this point is secured far more rapidly and
effectually by his new method, the inference is to his mind very
obvious, that he has made a great improvement--one of real and permanent
value. Perhaps he will consider it an extraordinary discovery.

But the truth is, that in almost all such cases as this, the secret of
the success is not that the teacher has discovered a _better_ method
than the ordinary ones, but that he has discovered a _new_ one. The
experiment will succeed in producing more successful results just as
long as the novelty of it continues to excite unusual interest and
attention in the class, or the thought that it is a plan of the
teacher's own invention leads him to take a peculiar interest in it. And
this may be a month, or perhaps a quarter; and precisely the same
effects would have been produced if the whole had been reversed, that
is, if the plan of dictation had been the old one, which in process of
time had, in this supposed school, lost its interest, and the teacher,
by his ingenuity and enterprise, had discovered and introduced what is
now the common mode.

"Very well," perhaps my reader will reply, "it is surely something
gained to awaken and continue interest in a dull study for a quarter, or
even a month. The experiment is worth something as a pleasant and useful
change, even if it is not permanently superior to the other."

It is indeed worth something. It is worth a great deal; and the teacher
who can devise and execute such plans, _understanding their real place
and value, and adhering steadily through them all to the great object
which ought to engage his attention,_ is in the almost certain road to
success as an instructor. What I wish is not to discourage such efforts;
they ought to be encouraged to the utmost; but to have their real
nature and design, and the real secret of their success fully
understood, and to have the teacher, above all, take good care that all
his new plans are made, not the substitutes for the great objects which
he ought to keep steadily in vie