nxiety and labour of both teacher and scholar.

There is no doubt a great diversity in the natural capacities of
children; and phrenology, as well as daily experience shews, that
children who are apt in learning one thing, may be exceedingly dull and
backward in acquiring others. But after making every allowance for this
variety in the intellectual powers of children, it is well established
by experience, and repeated experiments have confirmed the fact,[9] that
the very dullest and most obtuse of the children found in any of our
schools, are really capable of rapid cultivation, and may, by the use of
proper means, be very soon brought to bear their part in the usual
exercises fitted for the ordinary children. A large proportion of the
dulness so frequently complained of by teachers arises, not so much from
any natural defect, or inherent mental weakness in the child, as from
the want of that early mental exercise,--real mental culture,--of which
we are here speaking. Whenever this dulness in a sane scholar continues
for any length of time, there is good reason to fear that it is owing to
some palpable mismanagement on the part of the parent or teacher. On
examination it will most likely be found, either that the pupil has had
exercises prescribed to him which the powers of his mind were as yet
incapable of accomplishing; or, if the exercises themselves have been
suitable, there has been more prescribed than he was able to overtake.
In either case the effect will be the same. The mind has been
unnaturally burdened, or overstretched; confusion of ideas and mental
weakness have been the consequence; and if so, the very attempt to keep
up with his companions in the class only tends to aggravate the evil.
Hence arises the propriety of following Nature in making the expansion
and cultivation of the powers of the mind our first object; and our
design in the present chapter is to examine into the means by which, in
the exercises of the school, she may be successfully imitated in the
operations which she employs for this purpose.

We have in our previous investigations seen, that the cultivation of the
mental powers is a work of extraordinary simplicity, depending entirely
upon one act of the mind,--the reiteration of ideas. We have proved, by
a variety of familiar instances, that wherever this act takes place, the
mind is, and must be exercised, and so far strengthened; while, on the
contrary, wherever it does not take place,