Let us now, for the more full understanding of the subject, go to the other extreme, and consider a case in which the management is as far as possible removed from that above referred to.  We can not have a better example than the method often adopted in schools and seminaries for teaching composition; in other words, the art of expressing one’s thoughts in written language—­an art which one would suppose to be so analogous to that of learning to talk—­that is, to express one’s thoughts in oral language—­that the method which was found so eminently successful in the one would be naturally resorted to in the other.  Instead of that, the method often pursued is exactly the reverse.  The pupil having with infinite difficulty, and with many forebodings and anxious fears, made his first attempt, brings it to his teacher.  The teacher, if he is a kind-hearted and considerate man, perhaps briefly commends the effort with some such dubious and equivocal praise as it is “Very well for a beginner,” or “As good a composition as could be expected at the first attempt,” and then proceeds to go over the exercise in a cool and deliberate manner, with a view of discovering and bringing out clearly and conspicuously to the view, not only of the little author himself, but often of all his classmates and friends, every imperfection, failure, mistake, omission, or other fault which a rigid scrutiny can detect in the performance.  However kindly he may do this, and however gentle the tones of his voice, still the work is criticism and fault-finding from beginning to end.  The boy sits on thorns and nettles while submitting to the operation, and when he takes his marked and corrected manuscript to his seat, he feels mortified and ashamed, and is often hopelessly discouraged.

How Faults are to be Corrected.

Some one may, perhaps, say that pointing out the errors and faults of pupils is absolutely essential to their progress, inasmuch as, unless they are made to see what their faults are, they can not be expected to correct them.  I admit that this is true to a certain extent, but by no means to so great an extent as is often supposed.  There are a great many ways of teaching pupils to do better what they are going to do, besides showing them the faults in what they have already done.

Thus, without pointing out the errors and faults which he observes, the teacher may only refer to and commend what is right, while he at the same time observes and remembers the prevailing faults, with a view of adapting his future instructions to the removal of them.  These instructions, when given, will take the form, of course, of general information on the art of expressing one’s thoughts in writing, and on the faults and errors to be avoided, perhaps without any, or, at least, very little allusion to those which the pupils themselves had committed.  Instruction thus given, while it will have at least an equal tendency with the other mode to form the pupils