396 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 



sentence to the shortest, consistent with perfect lucidity. 

 It requires a short severe study and some little regular 

 attention. 



Fanny has been looking over parts of it, and quite agrees 

 with me that the words underlined in pencil will be so many 

 stumbling-blocks to village school children and even higher 

 class ones. In short the whole is not only too scientific but 

 in too scientific language. 



[March 3, 1855.] I am extremely glad to find that you have 

 not taken umbrage at my severe criticism on your little book 

 MS. I am always severe and often unreasonably so, though I 

 do not think I was so in that case. I have often thought that 

 it is impossible for a really highly educated man to write a 

 good book for the ignorant, except he be checked by another ; 

 to write down to a low capacity, or low standard, is of all 

 things the most difficult. Your present plan is excellent and 

 will, I should say, answer perfectly if you will rigidly resist 

 all temptation to digression, long sentences and giving more 

 than one idea, or fact, to be mastered at a time. I made 

 large allowances in your MS. for Leonard's copying, and am 

 fully aware that the lesson was to be learnt by the develop- 

 ing plants, and therein lay another difficulty, it would be 

 impossible to arrive at a general accurate idea of ' the 

 plant ' by such protracted means, and it is by giving such a 

 general idea of all the main parts and their relations, as 

 rapidly as possible, that we must begin. In your MS. 

 there is far too much to be learnt of each organ to allow an 

 ordinary intellect to grasp the whole at the end of the first 

 lesson. You talk of a return to collect ' scattered ideas ' ; 

 now these said scattered ideas are what of all things I would 

 avoid the possibility of the pupils acquiring. The first 

 acquired knowledge should be systematic and definite. 

 [An analysis of eight Lessons follows.] 



I doubt your doing with less than these viii Lessons, 

 but I do not doubt your doing with far fewer words than 

 you imagine. Fanny says that your diffuseness is your 

 snare ; I say it is of all clergymen, and of all those who are 

 much in the habit of writing for the public, with no mentor 

 or critic to check them, and whose time is their own in the 

 rostrum. I never read or heard a sermon that I could not 

 weed of half its words to the greatest advantage of the 



