the regular proportions of the whole remain undisturbed. The pupil has, by the original outline and its several branches, got a date and a place for every new fact which he may afterwards glean, either in his reading or his conversation; and he has a place in which to put it, where it can easily be found. When placed there, it is safe in the keeping of the memory, and will always afterwards be at the command of the will. The connection of these circumstances, with the principle in education which we are at present endeavouring to illustrate, may not to some be very apparent. We shall therefore take another example from a circumstance similar to what occurs every day in ordinary life, and in which the principle, in the hands of Nature, is abundantly conspicuous. In the example we are here to give, she forms the several steps of the classification in a number of hearers by _once_ reading a subject, very similar to what she does successively in the mind of one individual by _repeated_ readings. Let us then suppose a teacher with two or three hundred pupils, including every degree of mental capacity, from the youngest child who is able to understand, up to his own classical assistant; and that he reads to them the history of Joseph as given in the Book of Genesis. Let us also suppose, that they all give him their best attention, and that they all hear the narrative for the first time. Such an experiment, let it be observed, has its parallel every day, in the church, in the class room, and in the seminary; and similar effects to those we are about to describe invariably take place in each of them. When the teacher has read and concluded this lengthened exercise, it will be found, that no two individuals among his hearers have acquired the same amount of knowledge. Some will have received and retained more of the circumstances, and some less, but no two, strictly speaking, will be alike. Those whose minds were incapable of connecting the several parts of the narrative into a whole, will retain what they have received in disjointed groups and patches,--episodes, as it were, in the narrative,--without being able very clearly to perceive its general design. This class, upon whom the principle of association chiefly has been at work, we leave out, and confine ourselves to the state of knowledge possessed by those who are in a greater or less degree capable of classification, and of taking some cognisance of the narrative as a connected whole.