ditional information afterwards will assist in filling up
the empty spaces left between the more massive materials, but it will
neither shake, nor shift them; and even the most minute details of
individual or family incidents, connected with the general narrative,
while they add additional interest, and fill up or ornament different
and separate parts, will never alter the general form of the fabric, nor
displace any of the main pillars upon which it is supported.

This is one way of illustrating this analytical process of Nature; but
for the purposes of imitating it in education it is not perhaps the
best. The idea of a regular analytical table of the history, formed of
successive branches, by successive readings, is by far the most natural
and applicable. By a first reading of a portion of history, there are
certain great leading points established in the mind of the reader,
which form the first branches of a regular analysis, and to some one or
other of which parts or divisions every circumstance of a more minute
kind connected with the history, will be found to be related. This first
great division of the history attained by the first reading, if correct,
will, and must, remain the same, whatever addition may afterwards be
made to it. By a second reading, our knowledge of the leading points
will greatly assist us in collecting and remembering many of the more
minute circumstances embodied in them, or intimately connected with
them; but even then, an ordinary mind, and more especially a young
person, will not have made himself master of all the details. A third,
and perhaps a fourth reading, will be found necessary to give him a full
command of all the minuter circumstances recorded.[18]

In endeavouring to take advantage of this principle, so extensively
employed by Nature, it is of great importance to observe, that a certain
definite effect is produced by each successive reading. A first reading
establishes in the mind of the pupil a regular frame-work of the whole
history, which it is the business of every successive reading to fill up
and complete. There is by the first course, a separation of the whole
subject into heads, forming the regular divisions of a first branch of
the analysis;--the second course tends to subdivide these again into
their several parts; and to form a second branch in this analytical
table;--and a third course, would enable the pupil to perceive and to
separate the parts of the narrative i