e should feel ourselves in doubt concerning the fact. But if two
people agreed in the same testimony, our doubt would vanish; the
dishonest man's doubtful evidence would be corroborated, and we should
believe, notwithstanding his general character, in the truth of his
assertion in this instance. We could make the matter infinitely more
complicated, but what has been said will be sufficient to suggest to
preceptors the difficulty which their young and inexperienced pupils
must feel, in forming judgments of facts where physical and moral
probabilities are in direct opposition to each other.

We wish that a writer equal to such a task would write trials for
children as exercises for their judgment; beginning with the simplest,
and proceeding gradually to the more complicated cases in which moral
reasonings can be used. We do not mean, that it would be advisable to
initiate young readers in the technical forms of law; but the general
principles of justice, upon which all law is founded, might, we
think, be advantageously exemplified. Such trials would entertain
children extremely. There is a slight attempt at this kind of
composition, we mean in a little trial in Evenings at Home; and we
have seen children read it with great avidity. Cyrus's judgment about
the two coats, and the ingenious story of the olive merchant's cause,
rejudged by the sensible child in the Arabian Tales, have been found
highly interesting to a young audience.

We should prefer truth to fiction: if we could select any instances
from real life, any trials suited to the capacity of young people,
they would be preferable to any which the most ingenious writer could
invent for our purpose. A gentleman who has taken his two sons, one of
them ten, and the other fifteen years old, to hear trials at his
county assizes, found by the account which the boys gave of what they
had heard, that they had been interested, and that they were capable
of understanding the business.

Allowance must be made at first for the bustle and noise of a public
place, and for the variety of objects which distract the attention.

Much of the readiness of forming judgments depends upon the power of
discarding and obliterating from our mind all the superfluous
circumstances; it may be useful to exercise our pupils, by telling
them now and then stories in the confused manner in which they are
sometimes related by puzzled witnesses; let them reduce the
heterogeneous circumstances to