In the summer of 1831, the writer one morning found himself, by mere accident, and a perfect stranger, in a Sunday school in the borough of Southwark, London. He attached himself first to a class of children, some of whom he found on enquiry had been two years at the school, and were yet only learning the alphabet. In the same school, and on the same morning, a young man who only knew his letters, but had never yet attempted to put them together, was classified with the infants, whom he had willingly joined in his anxiety to learn. He had a lesson by himself. By a rigid adherence to the above principle of individuation, this young man, to his own great astonishment, was able in a few minutes to read a verse. The lesson went on, and in somewhat less than half an hour he had mastered several verses, and now knew perfectly how to make use of the letters in decyphering the several words. By that one lesson he found himself quite able to teach himself. In proof of this, as was afterwards ascertained, he read that same day on going home, without help, nineteen verses of the same chapter; and these verses, on returning to school on the same afternoon, he read correctly and without hesitation, to his usual and astonished teacher. There can be no doubt, from this circumstance, that if it had been at all necessary, he could, without further aid, and with still greater ease, have read a second nineteen verses, and perfected himself by practice in this important, and supposed difficult art of reading, by this one lesson of less than half an hour. In a later experiment, made in Dumfries, in the presence and under the sanction of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, and the clergymen and teachers of that town, the power of this principle was put to a severe trial, in a very unexpected and extraordinary manner. The week-day teachers of that town having heard of some of the above circumstances, and of the powers of the Lesson System generally, in enabling children to read with but little trouble, were desirous of having its powers tested in that town, where the writer happened to be for a few days. He agreed; and Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, the Sheriff of the county, with the clergymen and teachers, at his request, formed themselves into a committee for the purposes of the investigation. A sub-committee of the week-day teachers were appointed to procure a boy to be taught, which they did, and who, on being closely examined at a preliminary public meeting of the whole examinators, was found totally ignorant of words, and knew not one letter from another, with the exception, of "the round o."