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LONDON

BLACKBURN AND PARDON, PRINTERS,

HATTON GARDEN.

74720

C8A2

ΤΟ

MRS. FORBES LEITH,

OF

Whitehaugh.

DEAR MADAM,

In dedicating the following work to you, in whose hospitable residence the greater part of it was written, would I thus acknowledge, in some small degree, the many kindnesses received, and opportunities for study afforded, while at that time a guest in your family circle. Nor do I deem, that to any one may such a treatise more appropriately be inscribed—a leading principle of which is intended to illustrate the power of maternal affection as an element in moral training-than to a parent, whose own children have so largely participated in the best fruits of that benign influence.

Accept then, Dear Madam, in the dedication of these pages, the full tribute of that esteem which such an act has ever been held to imply; and that every happiness may attend you, is the sincere wish of,

Yours faithfully,

A. R. CRAIG.

UNIVERSITY

PREFACE.

It must often have occurred to those interested in the question of education, and observant of the form in which it is usually presented to the public, how much more attention is ever bestowed upon its merely external features than its intrinsic nature and properties. Too much has ever been taken for granted regarding a knowledge of the subject itself, while the various modes by which its still undefined principles should operate and manifest themselves have been discussed infinitesimally. The questions of a national or voluntary endowment—of a combined religious and secular, or an independent system —of a monitorial or simultaneous method-of explanatory modes and intellectual plans, have been the engrossing themes; and a consideration of them has doubtless elicited many valuable suggestions and improvements. But these all refer to so many mere contingencies surrounding the subject-adjectives, as one may say, of a substantive b

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