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means the Teacher would be led to follow up my suggestions and deductions, which would render the lesson attractive and morally useful, instead of being a lesson to be learnt by rote, without any signification or end, and then thrown aside. In this, as in every other branch of education, I do think that a little well said, and fully comprehended by the child, is more judicious and useful, than a lengthened lesson repeated without explanation or remark.

I have attempted, and I trust with some little success, to arrange these pieces in a graduated form,―beginning with some of the simpler poems and winding up with the more difficult ones, so as to prepare the pupil by progressive lessons to be able in the end to read, and recite the deeper and more magnificent productions of our great Bards.

CANTERBURY.

W. H. CORDEAUX.

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The Blind Boy's been at play Mother

A Child's Evening Prayer

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PREFACE.

The compiler of this small collection of Poems, considers it his duty to explain why he ushers into being this same little volume, when there are already so many works of a similar kind.

It is perfectly true that there are, in point of number, quite sufficient of these compilations, but it is likewise right to state, that there are very few, if any, small collections of choice and first-rate Poems,-poems which are fitted and pleasant to the capacity and taste of the young. With this idea, and having in vain sought for a cheap and really genuine collection of poetry, arranged in a progressive form, I have for the use of my own Pupils, and at the desire of several engaged in instructing the young, selected those which are generally esteemed the best juvenile pieces of our great Poets. I have been careful not to infuse any of those "Original Poems," which so abound in every work of this kind that I have chanced to meet with, and which from their decided mediocrity, and oftentimes actual absurdity, are most ill-fitted to the Pupil, and far from pleasant to the Teacher. I could enumerate upwards of a dozen School poetry books, filled with original poems written by unknown poets and poetesses, with not one piece of decided merit in them, but full of the veriest trash that a child could be made to learn by rote. And why is this? We have Wordsworth, Cowper, Campbell, Pope, Mrs. Hemans, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, and many others, of the highest note and celebrity, all of whom have written some pieces admirably calculated for young children.

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