ily fear, or by
the infliction of bodily punishment, a regiment of boys may be drilled
by an indefatigable usher into what are called scholars; but, perhaps,
in the whole regiment not one shall ever distinguish himself, or ever
emerge from the ranks. Can it be necessary to spend so many years, so
many of the best years of life, in toil and misery? We shall calculate
the waste of time which arises from the study of ill written, absurd
grammar, and exercise-books; from the habits of idleness contracted by
school-boys, and from the custom of allowing holydays to young
students; and we shall compare the result of this calculation with the
time really necessary for the attainment of the same quantity of
classical knowledge by rational methods. We do not enter into this
comparison with any invidious intention, but simply to quiet the
apprehensions of parents; to show them the possibility of their
children's attaining a certain portion of learning within a given
number of years, without the sacrifice of health, happiness, or the
general powers of the understanding.

At all events, may we not begin by imploring the assistance of some
able and friendly hand to reform the present generation of grammars
and school-books? For instance, is it indispensably necessary that a
boy of seven years old should learn by rote, that "relative sentences
are independent, _i. e._ no word in a relative sentence is governed
either of verb, or adjective, that stands in another sentence, or
depends upon any appurtenances of the relative; and that the English
word 'That' is always a relative when it may be turned into _which_ in
good sense, which must be tried by reading over the English sentence
_warily_, and judging how the sentence will bear it, but when it
cannot be altered, salvo sensu, it is a conjunction?" Cannot we, for
pity's sake, to assist the learner's memory, and to improve his
intellect, substitute some sentences a little more connected, and
perhaps a little more useful, than the following?

"I have been a soldier--You have babbled--Has the crow ever looked
white?--Ye have exercised--Flowers have withered--We were in a
passion--Ye lay down--Peas were parched--The lions did roar a while
ago."

In a book of Latin exercises,[1] the preface to which informs us, that
"it is intended to contain such precepts of morality and religion, as
ought most industriously to be inculcated into the heads of all
learners, contrived so as that children