Many other methods for exercising the child's mind and oral powers at the same moment, will be suggested by the ingenuity of teachers, and by experience; and wherever a teacher hits upon one which he finds efficient, and which works well with his children, it is to be hoped that he will not deprive others of its benefit. Such communications in education, like mercy, are twice blessed. But the exercise which, for its simplicity and power, as well as for the extent of its application to the business and arrangements of the school, appears to answer the purpose best, and which embodies most extensively the stipulations required for the successful imitation of Nature in this part of her process, is that which has been termed the "Paraphrastic Exercise." The exercise here alluded to has this important recommendation in its practical working, that while it can be employed with the child who can read no more than a sentence, it may be so modified and extended, as to exercise the mental and oral powers of the best and cleverest of the scholars to their full extent. It consists in making a child read a sentence or passage aloud; and, while he is doing so, in requiring him at the same moment, to be actively employed in detecting and throwing out certain specified words in the passage, and in selecting, arranging, and substituting others in their place; the child still keeping to the precise meaning of the author, and studying and practising, as far as possible, simplicity, brevity, elegance, and grammatical accuracy. It may be asked, "What child will ever be able to do this?" We answer with confidence, that every sane pupil, by using the proper means, may attain it. This is no hypothesis, but a fact, of which the experiment in Leith gives good collateral proof, and of which long and uniform experience has afforded direct and ample evidence. Any teacher, or parent indeed, may by a single experiment upon the very dullest of his pupils who can read, be satisfied on the point. Such a child, by leaving out and paraphrasing first one word in a sentence, then two, three, or more, as he acquires ability, will derive all the advantages above described; and, by advancing in the exercise, he may have his talents taxed during the whole progress of his education to the full extent of their powers. It is in this that one great recommendation lies to this exercise,--it being adapted to every grade of intellect, from the child who can only paraphrase a single word at a time, to the student who, while glancing his eye over the passage, can give the scope of the whole in a perfectly new form, and in a language and style entirely his own. Of the nature and versatility of this exercise we shall give a single example.