A great variety of written exercises is soon joined with the learning by heart. Pieces must be written from memory, and the spelling, pointing, &c., corrected by the pupil himself from the book. The same piece must be written again and again, till there are no more mistakes to correct. “This,” said Joseph Payne, who had himself taught in this way, “is the best plan for spelling that has been devised.” Then the pupil may write an analysis, may define words, distinguish between synonyms, explain metaphors, imitate descriptions, write imaginary dialogues or correspondence between the characters, &c. Besides these, a great variety of grammatical exercises may be given, and the force of prefixes and affixes may be found out by the pupils themselves by collection and comparison. “The resources even of such a book as “Rasselas” will be found all but exhaustless, while the training which the mind undergoes in the process of thoroughly mastering it, the acts of analysis, comparison, induction, and deduction, performed so frequently as to become a sort of second nature, cannot but serve as an excellent preparation for the subsequent study of English literature” (Payne). § 21. We see, from these instances, how Jacotot sought to imitate the method by which young children and self-taught men teach themselves. All such proceed from objects to definitions, from facts to reflections and theories, from examples to rules, from particular observations to general principles. They pursue, in fact, however unconsciously, the _method of investigation_, the advantages of which are thus set out in a passage from Burke’s treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful:—“I am convinced,” says he, “that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader [or learner] himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries.” “For Jacotot, I think the claim may, without presumption, be maintained that he has, beyond all other teachers, succeeded in co-ordinating the method of elementary teaching with the method of investigation” (Payne). § 22. The latter part of his life, which did not end till 1840, Jacotot spent in his native country—first at Valenciennes, and then at Paris. To the last he laboured indefatigably, and with a noble disinterestedness, for what he believed to be the “intellectual emancipation” of his fellow-creatures. For a time, his system made great way in France, but we now hear little of it. Jacotot has, however, lately found an advocate in M. Bernard Perez, who has written a book about him and also a very good article in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire_. XIX. HERBERT SPENCER.[185]