That person has a very inadequate idea of the subject, who supposes that it requires only ordinary talents and acquirements to produce good text-books for schools. There is a great difference in these works, indeed, as it respects the ability necessary to produce them. It may require, for example, less talent to compile a good reading-book, made up merely of selections from different authors, than to compose a good text-book on natural philosophy, where the matter requires to be thoroughly digested; but the hand of a master is required to mould every species of material into a proper form. It is a high effort of genius to simplify knowledge, and to bring down the loftiness of science to the familiar comprehension of the youthful mind. A mind of a high order will generally leave its impress on whatever it undertakes; and although it may compose a primer for children, there will generally be something in its matter or form, which will show that it is not the production of ordinary talents and acquirements. Dr. Watts displays the same genius in the books which he wrote for children, as in those profound works in which he developed the philosophy of mind. When the storm of the French revolution was raging, and sending forth its lightning and its thunder, and threatened to rive the British nation in pieces, Hannah More was one of those master-spirits that rode upon this whirlwind and directed this storm. By her small 'Cheap Repository Tracts,' addressed to the common people of England, who in a mental point of view were a kind of children, she became the safe-guard of the morals of her country; and the principal men in church and in state hailed these simple publications, as most happily adapted to their purpose, and as saying that which they could not themselves have said so well.