a method of teaching which has
been employed with success.

Whatever repairs are carried on in a house, children should be
permitted to see: whilst every body about them seems interested, they
become attentive from sympathy; and whenever action accompanies
instruction, it is sure to make an impression. If a lock is out of
order, when it is taken off, show it to your pupil; point out some of
its principal parts, and name them; then put it into the hands of a
child, and let him manage it as he pleases. Locks are full of oil, and
black with dust and iron; but if children have been taught habits of
neatness, they may be clock-makers and white-smiths, without spoiling
their clothes, or the furniture of a house. Upon every occasion of
this sort, technical terms should be made familiar; they are of great
use in the every-day business of life, and are peculiarly serviceable
in giving orders to workmen, who, when they are spoken to in a
language that they are used to, comprehend what is said to them, and
work with alacrity.

An early use of a rule and pencil, and easy access to prints of
machines, of architecture, and of the implements of trades, are of
obvious use in this part of education. The machines published by the
Society of Arts in London; the prints in Desaguliers, Emerson, le
Spectacle de la Nature, Machines approuvees par l'Academie, Chambers's
Dictionary, Berthoud sur l'Horlogerie, Dictionaire des Arts et des
Metiers, may, in succession, be put into the hands of children. The
most simple should be first selected, and the pupils should be
accustomed to attend minutely to one print before another is given to
them. A proper person should carefully point out and explain to them
the first prints that they examine; they may afterwards be left to
themselves.

To understand prints of machines, a previous knowledge of what is
meant by an elevation, a profile, a section, a perspective view, and a
(vue d'oiseau) bird's eye view, is necessary. To obtain distinct ideas
of sections, a few models of common furniture, as chests of drawers,
bellows, grates, &c. may be provided, and may be cut asunder in
different directions. Children easily comprehend this part of drawing,
and its uses, which may be pointed out in books of architecture; its
application to the common business of life, is so various and
immediate, as to fix it for ever in the memory; besides, the habit of
abstraction, which is acquired by drawing the sections of c