ing books and
papers for the young, authors and publishers feel justified in giving so
much labor and space to pictorial illustration. When, indeed, such
illustrations are merely for display, they deserve the contempt which
they often receive. But when these pictorial illustrations have a
definite meaning and design, when they teach something, when they
connect in the child's mind sound religious truth with distinct and
easily remembered visible forms, they are a really valuable aid in the
inculcation of doctrine.

The power of attention, like all the mental powers, is by nature greater
in some than in others. Still, there is no power more susceptible of
improvement. The importance of its cultivation cannot well be
over-stated. It affects not one study only, but all studies; not one
mode of study only, but every mode of study, by text-book or by lecture;
lessons to be recited by memory, or those by question and answer; not
even study only, but conduct and manners, the regulation of the heart
and the formation of the character. The precise measure of a child's
success, in every thing that pertains to his character and standing as a
scholar, will in nine cases out of ten be his power and habit of
attention. There are indeed lamentable cases of wilful and intentional
disorder. Yet every teacher knows that by far the greater portion of the
things which interrupt and disturb a school arise from thoughtlessness
and inattention. There are also equally undoubted cases of ignorance
that is no crime. Yet the great majority of those who fail in their
studies, fail simply because they do not attend. To attend, however,
means something more than merely to be bodily present, more even than
to have the ears open and the eyes fixed in the direction of the
speaker, when a thing is said, or done. An old lady used to sit in the
same aisle with me in church, and unfortunately lived opposite me in the
street, who was neither deaf nor blind, and who was never absent from
church, and yet she sent over invariably on Sunday evenings to know what
it was the minister said about that meeting on Wednesday night, or that
meeting on Friday night,--she did not rightly understand!

But it is not necessary to go to church, to find those who "having eyes
see not, and having ears hear not, neither do they understand," who look
without seeing, and hear without comprehending. Publish a notice in your
school, making some change of hours or lessons, or givin