rts is, _to
use the best known means for attaining any particular end_.--This law
is well known in all the other arts, and success invariably depends upon
its adoption. The fields are not now tilled by the hoe, nor is cotton
spun by the hand. These modes of operating have no doubt the
recommendation of antiquity; but here antiquity is always at a discount,
and no one doubts the propriety of its being so. The arts are advancing;
and they who would impede their progress on the plea of not departing
from the usages of antiquity, would be pitied or laughed at.

The art of teaching, like the other arts, depends for its success on a
strict adherence to this law; and the fear of departing in this case
from the particular usages of our ancestors is equally unreasonable.
Soft ground in the valleys compelled them to travel their pack horses
right over the hills, and the want of the "Jenny" made them spin their
yarn by the hand; but still, the same principle which guided them in the
adoption of those methods, was strictly the one which we are here
recommending, that of "using the best _known_ means for accomplishing
the particular end." Those who adopt the principle do most honour to
their sagacity; while their shallow admirers, by abandoning the
principle, and clinging to their necessarily imperfect mode of applying
it, at once libel their good sense, and dishonour those whom they
profess to revere. As society is rapidly advancing, paternal affection
would undoubtedly have prompted them to advise their descendants to take
the benefits of every advance;--and it would be as reasonable for us to
suppose, that if they were now alive, they would advise us to travel
over the hills on their old roads, or make our cloth in the old way, as
to think they would be gratified by our continuing to use exercises in
education, which sound philosophy and experience have shewn to be
fallacious and hurtful, or that they would be displeased by the use of
those which extensive experiment has now proved to be natural, easy, and
efficient.

These ancestral trammels have all been shaken off, wherever the
acquisition of money is concerned. The mechanical processes of his
forefathers have no charm for the modern manufacturer, when he can
attain his object more economically by a recent improvement. Neither
does he go blindfold upon a mere chance,--seldom even upon a sagacious
conjecture,--unless there be some good grounds for its formation. In
every succ