parents; and
they will never again be satisfied with a school or a teacher, where
solid instruction, and the most useful kind of knowledge are not
imparted. Ameliorations in his art, therefore, is now as necessary to
the teacher, as improvements in machinery are to the mechanic and the
manufacturer. It will no longer do for him to say, "I can see no
improvement in the change," if the parents of his pupils have been able
to discover it; and the teacher who stands still in the present forward
march of society, will soon find himself left alone. The practical
Educationist, like the mechanician, ought no doubt to be cautious in
adopting changes upon chance; but wherever an improvement in his art has
been sufficiently proved by fair experiment or long experience, and
particularly, when the principle upon which its success depends has been
fully ascertained, his rejecting the change on the plea of
inconvenience, or from the fear of trouble, is not only an act of
injustice to the parents of his pupils, but is a wrong which will very
soon begin to re-act upon his own interests. The effect of indifference
to improvement in this, as in other arts, may not be felt for a time;
but as soon as _others_ have made themselves masters of the improvements
which he has rejected, the successive departure of his pupils, and the
melting away of his classes, will at last awaken him to a sense of his
folly, when it may be too late. Such has usually been the effect of
remissness in the other arts; and the present state of the public mind
in regard to education, indicates a similar result in similar
circumstances.

In connection with this part of our subject, it may here be necessary to
remark, that as the experience of all teachers may not be alike in the
_first working_ of a newly applied principle,--the principle itself,
when fully ascertained, is not on that account to be either belied or
abandoned. There are many concurring circumstances, which may make an
exercise that succeeds well in the hands of one person, fail in the
hands of another; but to refuse credence to the principle itself,
because he cannot as yet successfully apply it, is neither prudent nor
wise. There are chemical experiments so exceedingly nice, and depending
on so many varying circumstances, that they frequently fail in the hands
of even good operators. But the chemical principles upon which they rest
remain unchanged, although individual students may have not been able