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VICTORIA SPELLING BOOK

ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS BY MASON JACKSON, AFTER DRAWINGS BY
WILLIAM HARVEY, ESQ.

BY JOSEPH GUY, JUN.

Of Magdalen Hall, Oxford;

Author of the English School Grammar; New Exercises in Orthography; New Exercise
in English Syntax; Outlines to Walker's Themes and Essays; The Learner's l'oetsc
Task Book; Geography for Young Children; New Arithmetical Plan;
Geographia Antiqua, or School Treatise on Ancient Geography;
An Improvement on the Eton Latin Grammar, &c.

LONDON:

CRADOCK AND CO. 48, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1850.

Price One Shilling, bound and lettered.

PREFACE.

LONDON.

It is difficult at times to know how to descend low enough to suit the capacities of some children; not that their apparent dulness arises in every instance from want of ability —often, perhaps, the reverse,—but their thoughts are frequently so actively employed on something foreign to the business in hand, that an unskilful teacher might be apt to pronounce the little learner a dunce, and one that could never be taught the A B C.

The leading endeavour of the writer of the following pages has been to meet, as nearly as possible, the wants of the dullest learners, by a very careful and gradual progress from letters to syllables, words, and sentences.

It is too often seen in works of this nature, and particularly in the older Spelling Books, that the Easy Lessons are generally too few, and that the steps from the most simple phrases and sentences to the more complex, are not sufficiently progressive. This is a serious fault in a First Book, and one that may have caused many a child to stumble at the threshold, and proceed no farther.

The plan herein adopted, of preparing the early Reading Lessons by a Spelling Task, consisting of such words as will be found in the former, together with the very easy gradation preserved throughout, is, perhaps, the best mode of gaining the object sought; namely, that of interesting and fixing the attention of young learners; who, on finding their progress