h says--'The plan has now been in operation
more than four years:' but the plan there spoken of is not the general
system, but a single feature of it--viz. the abolition of corporal
punishment: in the text this plan had been represented as an immature
experiment, having then 'had a trial of nine months' only: and
therefore, as more than three years nine months had elapsed from that
time to the publication of the book, a note is properly added
declaring that the experiment had succeeded, and that the author could
'not imagine any motive strong enough to force him back to the old
practice.' The system generally however must have existed now (_i. e._
November 1823) for nearly eight years at the least: so much is evident
from a note at p. 79, where a main regulation of the system is said to
have been established 'early in 1816.' Now a period of seven or eight
years must have been sufficient to carry many of the senior pupils
into active life, and to carry many of the juniors even into
situations where they would be brought into close comparison with the
pupils of other systems. Consequently, so much experience as is
involved in the fact of the systems outliving such a comparison--and
in the continued approbation of its founder, who is manifestly a very
able and a conscientious man,--so much experience, we say, may be
premised for the satisfaction of those who demand practical tests. For
ourselves, we shall abide rather in our valuation of the system by the
internal evidence of its composition as stated and interpreted by its
author. An abstract of all that is essential in this statement we
shall now lay before our readers.

What is the characteristic difference, in the fewest possible words,
of this system as opposed to all others? We nowhere find this stated
in a pointed manner: the author has left it rather to be collected
from his general exposition; and therefore we conceive that we shall
be entitled to his thanks by placing it in a logical, if possible in
an antithetic, shape. In order to this, we ask--what is a school? A
school is a body of young persons more or less perfectly
organised--which, by means of a certain constitution or system of
arrangements (A), aims at attaining a certain object (B). Now in all
former schemes of education this A stood to B the positive quantity
sought in the relation of a logical negative (_i. e._ of a _negation_
of quantity = _0_), or even of a mathematic negative (_i. e._
of-_x_):--b