the choice lying between Aristotle and Ouintilian (who comes in at a prior stage of the Miltonic curriculum).  The book so chosen would be read, and re-read; or rather each chapter would be gone over several times, with appropriate testing exercises and examinations.  The other works might then be overtaken and compared with the principal text-book; the judgment of the pupil being so far matured, as to see what in them was already superseded, and what might be adopted as additions to his already acquired stock of ideas.  Milton’s views of education embraced the useful to a remarkable degree; he was no pamperer of imagination and the ornamental.  His list of subjects might be said to be utility run wild:—­comprising the chief parts of Mathematics, together with Engineering, Navigation, Architecture, and Fortification; Natural Philosophy; Natural History; Anatomy, and Practice of Physic; Ethics, Politics, Economics, Jurisprudence, Theology; a full course of the Orators and Poets; Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics.  He tumbles out a whole library of reading:  but only in Ethics, does he indicate a leading or preferential work; the half-dozen of classical books on the subject are to be perused, “under the determinate sentence” of the scripture authorities.  With all this voracity for the useful, Milton had no conception of scientific form, or method; and indeed, few of the subjects had as yet passed the stage of desultory treatment; so that the idea of casting the knowledge into some one form, under the guidance of a chosen author, would never occur to him.  Better things might have been expected of James Mill, in conducting the education of his son.  Yet we find his plan to have been to require an even and exhaustive perusal of nearly every book on nearly every subject, without singling out any one to impart the best known form in each case.  The disadvantage of the process would be that, at first, all the writers were regarded as profitable alike.  Nevertheless, in the special subjects that he knew himself, he gave his own instructions as the leading text, and his pupil’s knowledge took form according to these.  In some cases, accident gave a text-in-chief, as when young Mill at ten years of age, studied Thomson’s Chemistry, without the distraction of any other work.  If there had been half-a-dozen Chemical manuals in existence, he would probably have read them all, and fared much worse.  It happens, however, that, in the more exact sciences, there is a greater sameness in the leading ideas, than in Politics, Morals, or the Human Mind; and the evil of distraction is so much smaller.  Undoubtedly, the best of all ways of learning anything is to have a competent master to dole out a fixed quantity every day, just sufficient to be taken in, and no more; the pupils to apply themselves to the matter so imparted, and to do nothing else.  The singleness of aim is favourable to the greatest rapidity of acquirement; and any defects are to be left out of account, until one thread of ideas is firmly set in the mind.  Not unfrequently, however, and not improperly, the teacher has a text-book in aid of his oral instructions.  To make this a help, and not a hindrance, demands the greatest delicacy; the sole consideration being that the pupil must be kept in one single line of thought, and never be required to comprehend, on the same point, conflicting or varying statements.