MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. BY HUGH MILLER, AUTHOR OF "THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," "FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR,' "Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills." WORDSWORTH. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN. NEW YORK: SHELDON, LAMPORT, AND BLAKEMAN. 1855. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by GOULD & LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. то THE READER. Ir is now nearly a hundred years since Goldsmith remarked, in his little educational treatise, that "few subjects have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth." And during the century which has well nigh elapsed since he said so, there have been so many more additional works given to the world on this fertile topic, that their number has been at least doubled. Almost all the men who ever taught a few pupils, with a great many more who never taught any, deem themselves qualified to say something original on education; and perhaps few books of the kind have yet appeared, however mediocre their general tone, in which something worthy of being attended to has not actually been said. And yet, though I have read not a few volumes on the subject, and have dipped into a great many more, I never yet found in them the sort of direction or encouragement which, in working out my own education, I most needed. They insisted much on the various |