disheartened, rendering a considerable amount of
additional trouble and--which is far more difficult to find--patience
necessary upon the part of the teacher.

Common sense points out, that the reading of phonetic words must be more
easily learnt than the reading of the aphonetic words, of which our
language is essentially composed. The real question is simply
this,--Does the infant mind advance with such rapidity under phonetic
teaching, as to enable it at a certain age to transfer its powers to
orthodox orthography, and reach a given point of knowledge therein,
with less trouble, and in a shorter space of time, than those infants
do who are educated upon the old system? If phonetic teaching has this
effect, it is an inestimable boon, and if not, it is a complete
humbug.[AM] It should also be borne in mind, that the same arguments
which hold good in the case of infants will apply also, in a great
degree, to adults who wish to learn to read, and to foreigners
commencing the study of our language. Whether any further use of
phonetics is either desirable or practicable, would be a discussion out
of place in these pages.

When any startling novelty is proposed, enthusiasts carry their advocacy
of it so far as often to injure the cause they wish to serve: on the
other hand, too many of the educated portion of the community are so
strenuously opposed to innovation, as to raise difficulties rather than
remove them. Has not the common sense of the age been long calling for
changes in the law of partnership, divorce, &c., and is not some
difficulty always arising? Has not the commercial world been crying
aloud for decimal coinage and decimal weights and measures, and are not
educated men constantly finding some objections, and will they not
continue to do so, until some giant mind springs up able to grasp the
herculean task, and force the boon upon the community? Were not
steamboats and railways long opposed as being little better than insane
visions? Did not Doctor Lardner prove to demonstration that railway
carriages could never go more than twenty miles an hour, owing to the
laws of resistance, friction, &c., and did not Brunel take the breath
out of him, and the pith out of his arguments, by carrying the learned
demonstrator with him on a locomotive, and whisking him ten miles out of
London in as many minutes? When I see that among so intelligent and
practical a people as the New Englanders--a people whose thoughts and
e