Lastly, teachers are often enemies to the public in so many particulars that I scarcely know with which to begin; not that I mean to charge them with being intentionally so—for it frequently happens with the best people in the world, that they are among the last to see their own greatest defects. Some of the faults of teachers may be considered as belonging exclusively to themselves, and for which they can find no excuse whatever in the faults of others—such, for example, as the two first enumerated. But those which I have now to expose, are so intimately blended with the faults of their employers, of their children, and of that portion of the world with which they are more immediately connected, that, like the reciprocating action of the various parts of certain mechanical contrivances, these faults must be viewed as causing each other. Thus, the parental fault of blindness to their children's defects, both natural and moral, and their consequent injustice to the instructers who ever blame or punish them, give birth to the equally fatal fault in teachers of carefully avoiding every hint of incapacity, and studiously concealing the ill-conduct of their pupils, because well aware that they probably will not be believed. If compelled to make communications on so perilous and ungrateful a subject, they are so softened and frittered away, as to produce a far less pardonable deception than entire silence, since a sensible parent would ascribe the last to its proper motive, when the glossing and varnishing process might lead them entirely astray. The same knowledge of the self-delusion, and consequent injustice of parents, leads teachers to the frequent commission of another fault, in which they often engage their particular friends as participators. At their public examinations (where they have any) they contrive a sort of Procrustes' bed, which all their pupils are made to fit, but rather by the {478} stretching than by the lopping process. This is usually managed so adroitly, that the public will see numerous goodly advertisements, with many imposing signatures, taking their rounds through all the newspapers, by which it clearly appears that every scholar in the school, however numerous they may be, even to the youngest child, performed to the entire satisfaction and admiration of all who saw or heard them. It is utterly impossible that these examinations, if fairly made, could have any such uniform and favorable result; for the difference of natural capacity alone must inevitably produce a great inequality of performance in the pupils. Every body with five grains of experience, knows that many other causes are constantly operating to increase this inequality. Such reports, therefore, of examinations, fail entirely with the reflecting, well-informed part of the community, to produce any thing but ridicule, disgust, or pity, while the ignorant and inexperienced are most unjustifiably imposed upon.