It might be too much to say that the rapidity of their progress and the pleasure which they experience in making it, are owing wholly to the commendation and encouragement they receive--for other causes may co-operate with these.
But it is certain that these influences contribute very essentially to the result.

There can be no doubt at all that if it were possible for a mother to stop her child in its efforts to learn to walk and to talk, and explain to it, no matter how kindly, all its shortcomings, failures, and mistakes, and were to make this her daily and habitual practice, the consequence would be, not only a great diminution of the ardor and animation of the little pupil, in pressing forward in its work, but also a great retardation in its progress.
_Example of the other Method_.
Let us now, for the more full understanding of the subject, go to the other extreme, and consider a case in which the management is as far as possible removed from that above referred to.

We can not have a better example than the method often adopted in schools and seminaries for teaching composition; in other words, the art of expressing one's thoughts in written language--an art which one would suppose to be so analogous to that of learning to talk--that is, to express one's thoughts in _oral_ language--that the method which was found so eminently successful in the one would be naturally resorted to in the other.

Instead of that, the method often pursued is exactly the reverse.

The pupil having with infinite difficulty, and with many forebodings and anxious fears, made his first attempt, brings it to his teacher.