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learning, it is very plain that the process may be explained to the
whole at once, so that half an hour spent in that exercise would enable
a very large proportion of them to understand the subject. So, if a
teacher is explaining to a class in Grammar the difference between a
noun and verb, the explanation would do as well for several hundred as
for the dozen who constitute the class, if arrangements could only be
made to have the hundreds hear it; but there are, perhaps, only a
hundred pupils in the school, and of these a large part understand
already the point to be explained, and another large part are too young
to attend to it. I wish the object of these remarks not to be
misunderstood. I do not recommend the attempt to teach on so extensive a
scale; I admit that it is impracticable; I only mean to show in what the
impracticability consists, namely, in the difficulty of making such
arrangements as to derive the full benefit from the instructions
rendered. The instructions of the teacher are, _in the nature of
things,_ available to the extent I have represented, but in actual
practice the full benefit can not be derived. Now, so far as we thus
fall short of this full benefit, so far there is, of course, waste; and
it is difficult or impossible to make such arrangements as will avoid
the waste, in this manner, of a large portion of every effort which the


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