is to begin by spelling them wrong; that the way to teach the right use of a letter, is to begin by giving a false account of a letter.  Yet the phonetic system, so far as it is anything, is precisely this.”  Then, again, with reference to the eight specimen scholars, taken from a school of fifty, and who were exhibited, he observes, “they were the same as those who were examined a year ago; nothing is said of the other forty-two.  It is not necessary to say anything more of the character of such evidence as this;” and he winds up by observing:  “Such a mode of instruction would, in his opinion, waste both the time and the labour employed upon it, and complicate and embarrass a study, which in its true shape is perfectly simple and clear.”  The following old anecdote would rather tend to prove that spelling and reading were not either “simple or clear” to a Lancashire judge, who, having asked the name of a witness, and not catching the word exactly, desired him to spell it, which he proceeded to do thus:—­“O double T, I double U, E double L, double U, double O, D.”  The learned judge laid down his pen in astonishment, and after two or three unsuccessful efforts, at last declared he was unable to record it—­so puzzled was he with the “simple” spelling of that clear name—­Ottiwell Wood.

In the Massachusetts Teacher of January, 1853, there is the report of a committee, in which they state “that children taught solely by the phonetic system, and only twenty minutes each day, outstripped all their compeers.”  They further add, that “the phonetic system, thus beneficial in its effects, has been introduced into one hundred and nineteen public and five private schools, and that they have reason to believe, that no committee ever appointed to examine its merits have ever reported adverse to it;” and they conclude by strongly “recommending teachers to test the merits of the System by actual trial in their schools.”  Then again, in the following number of their journal, they strongly condemn the system as both useless and impracticable.

Having carefully weighed the arguments on both sides, I am led to the conclusion, that the objections of those who condemn the system are partly owing to the fact, that while reaching their present advanced state of knowledge, they have entirely forgotten their own struggles, and are thus insensibly led to overlook the confusion and difficulty which must ever arise in the infant mind, where similar combinations produce similar sounds.  An infant mind is incapable of grasping differences, but understands readily simple facts; if what meets the eye represent a certain fixed sound, the infant readily acquires that sound; but if the eye rest on o, u, g, h, as a combination, and the endeavour is made to teach him the endless varieties of sound produced thereby, his little mind becomes puzzled, his ideas of truth become confused, his memory becomes distrusted, and his powers of reading become retarded by the time occupied in the—­to him—­most uninteresting task of learning a host of unmeaning sounds.  The inevitable consequence is that the poor little victim becomes disheartened, rendering a considerable amount of additional trouble and—­which is far more difficult to find—­patience necessary upon the part of the teacher.