(3) No accidental relations of parts of names is resorted to, as was done in the case of the American Presidents.
(4) The series is so taught that it can be recited forwards and backwards--the only true test of learning any series.
(5) The series is completely worked out and nothing is left to chance or possible mistakes so liable to be committed by novices in dealing for the first time with a new process that has to be applied to many details.
(6) When the series is carefully studied and the relations painstakingly _characterised_, it is quickly learned and it is hard to forget.
(7) When the series is learned by this method and the relations are occasionally reviewed and _identified_, its recital both ways once or twice a day for a month helps to develop the Attention as well as the Assimilative powers.
(8) The _exact name_ of each Sovereign is learned. The student relies on real relations and names, and not on unidentified jingles of threes and threes and twos and twos, like three Edwards and three Henrys and two Edwards and two Henrys, with the inevitable necessity of having afterwards to learn _which_ Edward and _which_ Henry was meant, &c. But summations can follow specifications.
(9) Pestalozzi [1745-1827] taught that we must proceed from the "known" to the "unknown;" but this principle mainly applies to learning the words of a foreign language. When we begin to learn such words they are wholly unknown to us. But in learning ordinary series of names or prose or poetry by heart, all the names and words used may be equally well known by us; but it is mainly the _order_ in which these occur that we wish to memorise, and we begin at the beginning and proceed as we learn on from the Better Known or Best Known. In the list of American Presidents the series extends back to a little more than a century; but in the case of the English Sovereigns, when we begin with the Conqueror, the series extends back to 1066--upwards of 800 years--and, although in such a series the names of all the Sovereigns may be known, yet the latest is vastly better known to us than the earliest. In such a case it may be most useful to begin with the Best Known.
(10) Fortunately in this case the Best Known Sovereign is a PIVOT around which all the other Sovereigns are directly or indirectly related. _How_, we will proceed to show. Something of the method will be intimated by the difference of type and spaces between the names:--