Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/38

 Saturdays the boys were called in separate classes to her apartment: she read a fable, a short story, or a moral essay, to them aloud, and then sent them back into the school-room to write it out on the slates in their own words. Each exercise was separately overlooked by her; the faults of grammar were obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every correction; so that the arts of enditing and of criticizing were in some degree learnt together. Many a lad from the great schools, who excels in Latin and Greek, cannot write properly a vernacular letter, for want of some such discipline."

The department of geography was also undertaken by Mrs. Barbauld; and she relieved the dryness of a study seldom rendered interesting to children, by so many lively strokes of description, and such lu-