answer he had written, or he may examine the slates.  Perhaps this method may be very successfully employed in reviews by dictating to the class a list of questions relating to the ground they have gone over for a week, and then instructing them to prepare answers written out at length, and to bring them in at the next exercise.  This method may be made more formal still by requiring a class to write a full and regular abstract of all they have learned during a specified time.  The practice of thus reducing to writing what has been learned will be attended with many advantages so obvious that they need not be described.

It will be perceived that three methods of examining classes have now been named, and these will afford the teacher the means of introducing a very great variety in his mode of conducting his recitations, while he still carries his class forward steadily in their prescribed course.  Each is attended with its peculiar advantages.  The single replies, coming from individuals specially addressed, are more rigid, and more to be relied upon, but they consume a great deal of time, and, while one is questioned, it requires much skill to keep up interest in the rest.  The simultaneous answers of a class awaken more general interest, but it is difficult, without special care, to secure by this means a special examination of all.  The written replies are more thorough, but they require more time and attention, and while they habituate the pupil to express himself in writing, they would, if exclusively adopted, fail to accustom him to an equally important practice, that of the oral communication of his thoughts.  A constant variety, of which these three methods should be the elements, is unquestionably the best mode.  We not only, by this means, secure in a great degree the advantages which each is fitted to produce, but we gain also the additional advantage and interest of variety.

By these, and perhaps by other means, it is the duty of the teacher to satisfy himself that his pupils are really attentive to their duties.  It is not perhaps necessary that every individual should be every day minutely examined; this is, in many cases, impossible; but the system of examination should be so framed and so administered as to be daily felt by all, and to bring upon every one a daily responsibility.

* * * * *

We come now to consider the second general head which was to be discussed in this chapter.

The study of books alone is insufficient to give knowledge to the young.  In the first stage, learning to read a book is of no use whatever without the voice of the living teacher.  The child can not take a step alone.  As the pupil, however, advances in his course, his dependence upon his teacher for guidance and help continually diminishes, until at last the scholar sits in his solitary study, with no companion but his books, and desiring, for a solution