views and intentions; and, finally, to allude to their propagation
through the country personally by myself, on purpose to show, in
conclusion, that although infant education has been extensively
adopted, and many of its principles, being based on nature, have been
applied with great success to older children, yet especially in the
case of infants, that strict adherence to nature and simplicity which
is so fundamental and so requisite, has been often overlooked, and in
some cases totally discarded.

It will, I trust, appear from what has been already said, that even
from early childhood I both saw and felt that there was a period in
human life, and that the most important period, as experience has
proved to my full satisfaction, not legislated for, that is, not duly
provided with suitable and appropriate methods of education. To see
this was one thing, to provide a remedy for it and to _invent plans_
for carrying out that remedy, was another. The systems of Bell and of
Lancaster were then commencing operations, but were quite unsuitable
for children under seven years of age at least, and therefore took
little or no cognizance of that early period, which I had been
inwardly convinced was of such eminent importance. I was destined for
business, and served the usual apprenticeship to become qualified for
it, and also continued in it for a short period on my own account.
Even at this time the thought ever haunted me as to what should be
done for young children. At length the germ was developed at one of
the Sunday Schools, which were then rising into general notice. For
years I attended one of these in London, and here circumstances again
befriended me, regarding the matter so frequently in my thoughts. The
teachers mostly preferred having a class to superintend that knew
something, and I being then a junior, it fell to my lot to have a
class that knew little or nothing. I mean nothing that it was the