"AMERICAN POPULAR LESSONS," "PRIMARY, DICTIONARY,” ENTERED According to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, BY ELIZA ROBBINS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of PREFACE. THE superfluity of school-books which already exists, seems to make any further multiplication of them absurd, unless new ones should be better than the old; and it is somewhat presumptuous to suppose that a better than so many existing compilations can be furnished-but as an instructor of young persons, I have felt the want of elementary books different from those in common use, and therefore I have composed them. All that is new to a pupil stands in need of illustration, for without it his mind is rather overburthened than enriched by his acquirements. Oral instruction may furnish an enlightened commentary upon what is contained in school-books; still it would diminish the labour of instruction if school-books themselves should not only afford the principal matter of instruction, but lead the young to enquiry, and supply the helps which the understanding needs in order to make the finest writers intelligible; and it appears to me that ordinary school-books are wholly deficient in this respect. It is a matter of self-gratulation to many, that they were early made acquainted with the finest passages of English poetry, that these passages were safely stored in the memory before the imagination or the heart could be affected by their beauty, and that, in after life, when the higher powers have been cultivated they could discover |