convincing and decisive in regard to charitable establishments; and the plan of education there adopted has, after the experience of several years, been, by those whose opinions are likely to have the greatest weight, recommended to similar establishments. How far such a system will apply to education in general, may be inferred from the tenour of the following report. That further and similar trials may be made, and the success in every instance ascertained by experience, is the aim of this publication. b See the Government of Madras to the Governor-General, and to Bombay. Ib. ADVERTISEMENT. ON my arrival from India, in the year 1797, the first edition of this humble essay, on prac-. tical Education, was published. Fraught with the enthusiasm to which this experiment owes its origin and its event, I was exceedingly solicitous to give currency to the system of Education practised in the Male Asylum at Madras; a system which, I flattered myself, would, in the course of ages, become general. Aware, however, of the natural and often just prejudice entertained by men of sagacity and experience against every novel attempt, I was apprehensive that the report of what had been done in India, might be regarded in Europe as a speculative doctrine rather than a practical fact. To guard against this imputation, it was thought advisable to publish the entire despatches of the. Government of Madras relative to the success of this Institution. In consequence of this resolution, the first edition of this experiment was с * See that Edition, Cadell and Davies, 1797; as containing the sum, substance, and evidence of all that is now digested and taught, restricted to extracts of the general letters of the Right Honourable Governor, and the Honourable Governors of Madras in Council to the Honourable East India Company, reports of the Male Asylum, and other authentic documents relative to that Institution. In the second edition, several of these documents were omitted, as, at the period of its publication, there did not appear the same occasion to authenticate facts, which were already acted upon, with just success, in various shapes, in different parts of the kingdom; and there were substituted such illustrations of the actual operations in the Asylum, as might assist the Reader, engaged in prosecuting this experiment, to find his way, where a guide had been most frequently desired. Still, however, these instructions, not having proved sufficiently distinct or minute, have only served to excite, not allay curiosity, and have called forth fresh, and more numerous inquiries. With a view to meet these inquiries, it is now endeavoured to reduce the facts scattered through the records of the Asylum into a more consecutive form than that in which they occur in the minute-book of that Institution (where they were chiefly meant to specify, authenticate, and perpetuate what was there established) and to explain the practices of the School more at length, ADVERTISEMENT. ix than was necessary, where the prototype was before the eyes of the Reader. To provide against that confusion, which has arisen in the minds of some inquirers, from mingling tenets, derived from other sources, with the facts on the records of the Asylum, and from not discriminating between the system of the Asylum, and the detached practices there introduced; between the general principle, on which the School hinges, and the isolated expedients, which were contrived to forward individual steps in the process of teaching; it is now meant to analyze the system, to collect into one series, what relates to the scheme of the School, and the principles on which it is founded; and in a separate compartment to distinguish and detail the independent, subordinate, and auxiliary practices in teaching. Extracts of the original experiment will follow. In a fourth compartment, it will be shewn that this system is not less applicable to Schools of Industry, than to the charitable Institution in which it origi nated and that by its means every School for the lower orders of youth may, without prejudice to their appropriate education, be rendered at the same time a School of Industry. Nor will its intimate connection with the poor laws be overlooked, both as presenting a scheme, not less adapted to their administration, than to the economy of a School; and as furnishing em |