Even among very competent teachers, there is frequently a fault of very pernicious tendency, in which they are encouraged, particularly by those who patronize them. It is often, probably, committed without design to deceive; but in this, as in many other matters, innocence of intention does not prevent the mischief of the act. Dr. South, I believe, somewhere says, “Hell itself is paved with good intentions.” The fault to which I allude is, that they, and their friends for them, often promise _too much_. Thus the teachers make out a very specious and flourishing epitome of their respective institutions, promising at one and the same time, both to shorten the period of instruction, and to augment the stock of knowledge imparted, in some most surprising manner, by means of various wonder-working contrivances. Upon this, probably, some partial and over zealous friends are consulted. These, in order to repay the compliment paid to their judgment, feel bound to flourish away in their turn; when, behold, the joint product of this mutual flattery is a marvellous statement running through our public journals, by way of epilogue to the prospectus of these schools, representing the conductors of them as all so many Edgeworths, Pestalozzis, and Fellenburgs; their pupils all docile and talented; or, if perchance a stray black sheep should get among them, it is speedily made as white as the best of them, either by the force of example, or by an admirable system of rules and regulations of such sovereign potency, as to effect _that_ for a school, in a few weeks or months, which all the moral and religious teachers who have existed since the birth of our Saviour, have failed to accomplish for the christian world in eighteen hundred and thirty-six years. In these magic seminaries, by the wonder-working inventions of their conductors, all the crooked paths of education are speedily made straight—all the rough places smooth, and every old difficulty, which in times of yore, rendered the business of teaching and learning so irksome, tedious and puzzling, is made to vanish with a “presto, begone, thou mischievous imp of exploded and despised antiquity!” All the movements of these modernized and Utopian institutions, are represented as going on like clock-work, smooth as oil, and regular as the planetary system itself. Here, are never to be heard of any unmanageable children—any dunces—any mules who _can_, but _will not_ learn. Here the fabled Parnassus is realized, with all its charming prospects of verdant slopes, odoriferous flowers, delicious fruits, and immortalizing laurels: and here, the splendid portals of the august temple of science bear upon their ample fronts, the soul-cheering invitation of, “ask and ye shall have, knock and they shall be opened unto you;” the mere reading alone of which, is to obtain for the scholars as ready an admittance to all their