396 SCIENCE TEACHING : EXAMINATIONS 
sentence to the shortest, consistent with j^erfect 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 
stumbhng-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 jouv httle book 
MS. I am always severe and often unreasonably so, though I 
do not think I vvas 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 07ie 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 possibihty 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 pubhc, 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 
