sinks with an intensity of anxious despondency which none but a teacher
can understand.

This feeling of something very like _moral accountability for the guilt
of other persons_ is a continual burden. The teacher in the presence of
the pupil never is free from it. It links him to them by a bond which
perhaps he ought not to sunder, and which he can not sunder if he would.
And sometimes, when those committed to his charge are idle, or
faithless, or unprincipled, it wears away his spirits and his health
together. I think there is nothing analogous to this moral connection
between teacher and pupil unless it be in the case of a parent and
child. And here, on account of the comparative smallness of the number
under the parent's care, the evil is so much diminished that it is
easily borne.

2. The second great difficulty of the teacher's employments is _the
immense multiplicity of the objects of his attention and care_ during
the time he is employed in his business. His scholars are individuals,
and notwithstanding all that the most systematic can do in the way of
classification, they must be attended to in a great measure as
individuals. A merchant keeps his commodities together, and looks upon a
cargo composed of ten thousand articles, and worth a hundred thousand
dollars, as one; he speaks of it as one; and there is, in many cases, no
more perplexity in planning its destination than if it were a single box
of raisins. A lawyer may have a great many important cases, but he has
only one at a time; that is, he _attends_ to but one at a time. The one
may be intricate, involving many facts, and requiring to be examined in
many aspects and relations. But he looks at but few of these facts and
regards but few of these relations at a time. The points which demand
his attention come one after another in regular succession. His mind may