the final test of all literature for each reader. It must make its appeal as something to be embraced, and fondled, and lived. It must touch the heart. But if it be made up of unfamiliar experiences, or alien ideas, transcendent ideals, or vague conceptions, the picture suffers. Only the understanding heart reads arightthe appreciative heart, the dramatic creative sense, reenforced by a rich experience, the discriminating mind that furnishes material for a discriminating appreciation.

Literature, as one of the Fine Arts, is the product, the cumulative product, of the race's effort to give expression to its highest ideals concerning human spirit, and the achievements of the soul. All growth in the literature sense means, whatever else is implied, the power and disposition to appropriate type images and ideals as permanent facts in one's experience; ideas and ideals in terms of which the conduct of life is expressed.

This little book is an intelligent and purposeful attempt to open the way for an easy access of some real ideals to the heart of the pupil. Specimens of what is believed to possess high literary merit only have been selected; specimens, too, of beautiful imagery and noble ideals; selections easily accessible to teachers, and all of them suited to public school use.

It would obviously be unwise to attempt an inventory of the race's ideals which such literature seeks to express; but some typical ones may be suggested as binding

together the great literatures of which the selections in this book are examples.

Running through most of them is the conception of the ideal individual; sometimes the ideal family relation; the ideal civic relation; the ideal economic relation; and the ideal moral, cultural, and social relations. But, always and everywhere, real literature gives expression to one or another of such enduring ideals, in attractive form and with appealing force. It is a store of these that gives richness to mental life; and it is one function of purposeful education to put the child into intelligent, loving possession of them. RICHARD G. BOONE.

FAMOUS POEMS EXPLAINED

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

The famous charge of the English Light Brigade, immortalized in Tennyson's poem, took place at the battle of Balaklava, during the Crimean War, October 25, 1854. Balaklava is not far from Sebastopol on the borders of the Black Sea. The story is a thrilling one of bravery and of obedience to orders. The full strength of the Russian army, covered from attack by thirty guns, lay at a distance of a mile and a half from the armies of the allies (English, French, and Turks). Mackenzie's The 19th Century gives these particulars:

"Up to this time our Light Cavalry Brigade had not been engaged. Lord Lucan, their commander, now received by the hand of Captain Nolan a written order to advance nearer to the enemy. On reading this order Lord Lucan asked its bearer how far they were to advance. He received a reply which he construed, with fatal inaccuracy, to signify that it was his duty to charge the enemy. The Light Brigade made itself ready to attack the Russian army. Every man knew that some terrible mistake was sending the brigade to destruction, but no man shrunk from his duty of obedience. They role straight down the valley towards

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the wondering Russians and in full view of the chiefs of their own army, powerless now to restrain them. As the excitement of battle gained power over men and horses the pace increased. The shot of the Russian guns tore through their ranks, but did not abate the speed of their advance, the fierceness of their attack. They galloped their horses between the Russian guns, cutting down the gunners as they passed. They rode down and scattered several squadrons of cavalry. And then they paused, and turned back, and galloped toward the shelter of British lines. The Russians reopened upon them with grape and canister. Their return was beset by an overwhelming force of Russian cavalry; but they cut their way through and reached the position they had left scarcely half an hour before. Six hundred and seventy men went forth to that memorable ride, but only one hundred and ninety-eight came back."

Murdock's The Reconstruction of Europe says that the brigade would have been utterly destroyed, wiped out of existence, but for the brilliant and timely charge of a French company which attracted the attention of the Russians away from the English, leaving the valley comparatively clear for a few minutes for the retreat of the remnant of the Light Brigade.

Compare with this the story of Arnold von Winkelried, page 41; and the story of Thermopyla, in any history of Greece.