TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, CHARLES, BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND, I SHOULD be wanting in grateful duty® to your GRACE, as well as in honest jus tice to my subject, if I were to alter a word in my address on a former occasion, bearing date 5th February 1897. What was then prophecy is now history. "In the distinguished privilege of presenting this Effay to your GRACE I feel a gratification, which words cannot exprefs. My every wish in regard to my Syftem of Education is fulfilled. The boon, which I had heretofore destined for general diffusion in future ages, feems to me already realized to the rising generation. Not only the exalted station which your GRACE fills, but the individual who, happily for the best interest of the church and state, fills that station, stamps a prefent character on this experiment. And it is its highest recommendation, that the illuftrious patronage and facred fanction, under which it now goes forth to the world, are folely to be ascribed to the principles on which it is founded, and to the ends to which it is directed." I have the honour to be, With profound veneration, MY LORD, Your GRACE's dutiful, grateful, and devoted fervant, A. BELL. Manchester Street, 30th April, 1808. (v). ADVERTISEMENT. "Nonumque prematur in annum." Or the experiment in Education, more than twice nine years old, the author feels himfelf called upon by a host of pupils to fix the authenticity, to retrace the origin, to follow the progrefs, to vindicate the principle, and to mark out the bearings at greater length than has hitherto been done. In this defign it is one of the objects of this fourth Edition to form a record of the facts, proofs, and illustrations which go to demonftrate the powers, as well as to exhibit the conftruction of that machinery, by which children are enabled to inftruct themselves and one another. The perfonality, intimately blended with thefe documents, he begs once for all that his readers will do him the justice to apply, as it always does apply, though not industriously and affectedly noticed at the time, to the effects, confequences, and refults of this discovery, which he has no hefitation in saying are as grand and interesting, as the means, by which they are attained, are fimple and lowly. To have conceived the idea, undertaken the task, and, with unlicked and puerile agents, obftinately persevered in the face of prejudices, obftacles, and embarraffments, is the very head and front of his doings. It required no fhare of literature, erudition, science, or research, or whatever else of this fort men value in themselves, or wifh others to value them for, to effect what owing folely to the charge he had entered upon, and the circumstances in which he was placed, he happened to effect. But to withdraw from an experiment, as he has twice done, (fee 2d and 3d editions) its authentic vouchers, through a false delicacy as to the language in which they are expreffed, were to fap the fabric built on that foundation. In the patches and fhreds, forming parts of this compilation, and written in hafte as the |