character of so much of our teaching, did not the character of most of our books for schools exactly correspond with it. And the books do correspond: they not only give to a faulty teaching its cue, but, now that the _theory_ of education is being so much discussed, and in good degree improved, they constitute one of the most influential causes of the almost hopeless lagging of its practice. Now, how is it that pupils get on at all with such lessons and such books? The explanation is a simple one; but the consequences it is fraught with are not trifling. The simple fact is, pupils are not yet allowed to _study_ (in the best sense and manner of that process) the subjects they are prosecuting. When, now, they undertake in earnest to study, they are but too constantly confused and delayed by the no-method of the treatises they are being carried through. In a course of earnest intellectual work, the pupil must too often, with his present aids, become aware of absence of comprehension; he is ever and anon brought to stand still and cast about for the unsupplied preliminary facts and truths, for the unhinted hypotheses and inferences, which his situation and previous study do not enable him to supply, but which are necessary to a _comprehension_ of the results set down for him to deal with. Barren results, _per se_, our learners are now too much required to ingest; and such they are expected to assimilate into intellectual life and power! As well feed a boy on bare elements of tissue--carbon, sulphur, oxygen, and the rest; or, yet more charitably, dissect out from his allowance of tenderloin, lamb, or fowl, a due supply of ready-made nerve and muscular fiber, introduce and engraft these upon the nerve and muscle he has already acquired, and then assure our _protegé_, that, as the upshot of our masterly provision for his needs, we expect him to become highly athletic and intellectual--that so he is to evolve larger streams of muscular energy and more vivid flashes of spiritual force!