gone. He
does not, and at length he cannot, understand by reading. This habit, as
we formerly explained, when it is once formed, it requires great efforts
on the part of the child to overcome. Most people when they are actively
engaged in life, do at last overcome it; while thousands, who have
nominally been taught to read, never can surmount the difficulties it
involves. Many on this account, and for want of practising an art which
they cannot profitably use, lose the art altogether.

But again, let us suppose a child set to read that which he may
understand, but which he is required to read more rapidly than allows
him to perceive and to reiterate the ideas while reading, and let us
mark what are the necessary consequences in such a case. The child is
called on to read a sentence, and he does so. He understands it too. But
the art of reading is not yet familiar, and he has to bend part of his
attention to the decyphering of the words, as well as to the perception
and reiteration of the ideas. This requires more time in a child to whom
reading is not yet familiar, than to a child more advanced. But give him
a little time, and the matter is accomplished the ideas have been
received, and they will be reiterated, grouped, and committed to the
keeping of the memory,--and then they will form part of his knowledge.
But if this time be not given,--if the child, while engaged in
collecting the ideas from the words of one sentence, be urged forward to
the reading of another, the mental confusion formerly described
instantly takes place. More ideas are forced upon the mind than it can
reiterate; no group can be formed, because the elements of which it
ought to be composed, have not yet been perceived; the imagination gets
bewildered;--the mind is unnaturally burdened;--its faculties are
overstretched;--the child is discouraged and irritated; the powers of
his mind fatigued and weakened; and the whole object of the teacher is
at once defeated, and rendered worse than useless.--In every case,
therefore, when the child is called on to read, sufficient time should
be given;--the teacher taking care that the main design of reading, that
of collecting and grouping ideas, be always accomplished; and that the
pupil reads no more at one time than he can thoroughly understand and
retain.

There is yet another circumstance connected with this process of
grouping, which ought not to be overlooked. It refers to the order in
which the obje