Ebook Suggestive Hints Towards Improved Secular Instruction, Making It Bear Upon Practical Life

The reader must not expect anything like perfection in the following pages, or that the matter which they contain is arranged in the best possible order; they are intended to give an idea of what is taught in the school here, and the manner of teaching it: the Author feels that if anything of this kind had fallen in his own way when this school opened, it would have saved him much trouble; however, without apologizing for their imperfections, or attempting to point out their merits (the former of which others will but too readily see), such as they are, "he casts his bread upon the waters," hoping that it may in some way or other advance the cause of education: there will, no doubt, be found in it some chaff, but not unmixed, he is willing to hope, with some wheat also, which may be worth picking out: on the whole, as the man who purchased an axe of the blacksmith, which he wished to have all over polished like the edge, to which the latter agreed on condition that he would turn the grindstone, but finding the labour of so doing greater than he expected, said, he was not quite sure that he did not prefer a speckled axe to a bright one; so I feel myself obliged to let ray axe go forth with many specks upon it; however, such as it is, take it, reader! profit from, the bright spots, if it has any, and be lenient to the specks.

Preface To The Seventh Edition.

A New Edition of this little work having been called for, I avail myself of the opportunity of adding a few remarks on subjects of interest, arising out of the altered and varying conditions of our educational wants, and which are given in this prefatory chapter, as being the most convenient form in which to give them.