ave seen, to turn to our own benefit the knowledge
which she has imparted; but as the mode of teaching reading, which is
the _artificial_ method of acquiring information, often overlooks the
use we are to make of it, we remain satisfied with the knowledge itself,
and do not think of its application. To illustrate this fact in some
measure, let us suppose a basket of filberts set down for the use of a
company of boys, and that one of them tries to crack the shells with his
front teeth. He fails. But he sees his companions put the nuts farther
back in the mouth, and succeed. Does he lose his share, by continuing to
misapply the lever-power provided for him by Nature?--No indeed. He, by
a single observation, at once draws and applies the lesson;--he
immediately cracks his nuts as readily as his companions, and he
continues to do so all his lifetime after. But the same boy may have,
that very forenoon, been reading a treatise on the power of the lever,
and might read it again and again without considering himself at all
interested in the matter, or thinking it probable that he ever would.
His reading, without the application we are here recommending, would
never have led him to perceive the slightest similarity between the
fulcrum of the lever, and the insertion of his jaw; or any connection
between the lesson of the school, and the employment of the
parlour:--But that would.

This is but one of a thousand examples that might be given, of the evils
arising from the non-application of knowledge in reading, and which are
applicable, not to children merely, but also to adults. The drawing and
applying of lessons, the exercise which we are here recommending, has
been found a valuable remedy for this defect in ordinary reading. The
object of the teacher by its use, is to accomplish in the pupil by
_reading_, what we have shewn Nature so frequently does by
_observation_;--that is, to train the child to apply for his own use, or
the use of others, those truths which he acquires from his _book_, in
the same way that he does those which he derives from _experience_. To
illustrate this, we shall instance a few cases of every day occurrence,
in which the question, "What does this teach you?" when supplemented to
the fact communicated, will almost invariably answer the purpose
desired, whether the truth from which the lesson is to be drawn, has
been received by observation, by oral instruction, or by reading.

When an observing well-d