roper
channels, and train him to a correct mode of thinking by being himself
familiar with the true logical process, by having himself a cultivated
understanding. Such a teacher finds a pleasure in his task. He finds
that he is not only teaching his pupils to read and to spell, to write
and to cipher, but he is acquiring an ascendancy over them. He is
exerting upon them a moral and intellectual power. He is leaving, upon a
material far more precious than any coined in the Mint, the deep and
inerasible impress of his own character.

Let me repeat then, at the risk of becoming tiresome, what I hold to be
an important and elementary truth, that the teacher should know very
many things besides what he is required to teach. A good knowledge of
history will enable him to invest the study of geography with new
interest. Acquaintance with algebra will give a clearness to his
perceptions, and consequently to his mode of inculcating the principles,
of arithmetic. The ability to delineate off-hand with chalk or pencil
the forms of objects, gives him an unlimited power of illustrating every
subject, and of clothing even the dullest with interest. Familiarity
with the principles of rhetoric and with the rules of criticism, gives
at once elegance and ease to his language, and the means of more clearly
detecting what is faulty in the language of others. A knowledge of Latin
or of French, or of any language besides his own, throws upon his own
language a light of which he before had no conception. It produces in
his ideas of grammar and of language generally, a change somewhat like
that which the anatomist experiences from the study of comparative
anatomy. The student of the human frame finds many things that he cannot
comprehend until he extends his inquiries to other tribes of animals; to
the monkey, the ox, the reptile, the fish, and even to the insect world.
So it is with language. We return from the study of a foreign language
invariably with an increased knowledge of our own. We have made one step
at least from the technicalities of particular rules towards the
principles and truths of general grammar.

But it is not necessary to multiply illustrations. I have already said
enough to explain my meaning. Let me say, then, to every teacher, as you
desire to rise in your profession, as you wish to make your task
agreeable to yourself or profitable to your pupils, do not cease your
studies as soon as you gain your election, but conti