not done, it becomes miserable, and as a consequence restless,
troublesome, and mischievous. Such facts were made very evident to me
by the infants under my care in the earlier part of my career, and
also have been fully confirmed throughout it, and they have forced
me as it were to that more lively, interesting, and amusing mode of
instruction, which I have through life endeavoured to propagate.
I found children to be highly delighted with pictures and
object-lessons; hence their value and high importance is so strongly
insisted on in all my books, and the best methods of using them
distinctly laid down. The trouble of rightly using such lessons has
caused them to be almost entirely laid aside in very many existing
infant schools, and in too many instances the mere learning and
repeating of sounds by rote, or what may very properly be called the
"parrot system," has been introduced in their place. But I yet hope
that the good sense of the public will in the end remedy such defects.
In such cases the memory is the only faculty exercised, and that at
the expense of those that are higher. Where this is persisted in, the
infant system is rendered nugatory, and my labours are in vain. It
therefore cannot be too strongly insisted on, and too frequently
repeated, that one of its most fundamental principles, as regards the
unfolding, properly and easily, of the intellectual faculties, is to
communicate _notions_ and _ideas_ rather than words and sounds, or at
least to let them be done together.

As before stated, the gallery had its origin in my desire to teach the
children simultaneously. It enables a teacher more readily to secure
their full attention in all oral lessons, and establishes a sympathy
between them. More real facts may be taught children simultaneously by
the master, than can be taught by all the monitors in a school. The
little infants should always sit at the bottom, and by no means be