his establishment, are complicated and various,
and to a stranger they are both curious and instructive; but it is
neither the labour nor the variety that he is seeking. His is a very
different object; and of this object he never loses sight; for the
varied operations of stapling and carding, of spinning and weaving, are
nothing more than means which he employs for accomplishing his end. He
knows the uses of the whole complicated operations; and he sees at a
glance, and can tell in a moment, how each in its turn contributes to
the great object of all,--the production of a good and marketable cloth.

Now this law ought to be applied with the utmost strictness to the art
of teaching. For if teaching be really an art,--that is, a successive
combination of means,--it should undoubtedly be a combination of means
to some specific end. Nothing can be more obvious, than that a man who
sits down to work, should know what he intends to do, and how he is to
do it. Such a line of conduct should be imperatively demanded of the
teacher, both on account of the importance of his work, and of the
immense value of the material upon which he is to operate. The end he
has in view, whatever that end may be, ought to be correctly defined
before he begins; and no exercise should upon any account be prescribed
or demanded from his pupils, which does not directly, or indirectly at
least, conduce to its attainment. To do otherwise is both injudicious
and unjust. For if the operations of the husbandman during spring have
to be selected and curtailed with the strictest attention to time and
the seasons, how carefully ought the energies and the time of youth to
be economized, when they have but one short spring time afforded them,
during which they are to sow the seed which shall produce good or evil
fruit for eternity? As to what this great end which the teacher ought
steadily to contemplate should be, we shall afterwards enquire; at
present we are desirous only of establishing this general law in the art
of teaching, that there should be an end accurately defined, and
constantly kept in view; and for the attainment of which every exercise
prescribed in the school should assist. The teacher who does otherwise
is travelling in the dark, and compelling labour for labour's
sake;--like the manufacturer who would keep all his machinery in motion,
not to make cloth, but to appear to be busy.

2. Another law adopted in the successful prosecution of the a