WHAT CAN BE DONE TO ELEVATE THE STANDARD OF TASTE AMONG STUDENTS. BY H. L. BOLTWOOD. No. 4. F, by a higher taste in literature, is meant | ing was compelled, perforce, to grapple with an increased fondness for committing to something which was considered worthy of memory, for the purpose of recitation, lists of mature thought. In reading, the mind was, names of unknown authors and their respec- of necessity, lifted somewhat beyond a childtive works, I know nothing that can be done ish range of elevation; and so, while many or ought to be done. There is no magic in were repelled from books, those who clung to the repetition even of a great name, unless them from pure affection became, as a matter that name calls up its becoming associations. of course, thinkers and reasoners. The books To many an ear Virgil means no more than which have come down to us from any perBavius and Mævius, and Amos Cottle is as iod more than a century remote generally suggestive to such an one as S. T. Coleridge. illustrate the "survival of the fittest." WithOliver Optic is to many a lad a greater man out artificial helps, they have withstood the than Scott or Dickens, and Beadle's Dime buffetings of the waves of time which, hap. Novels will be eagerly read by him while pily for all, have engulfed most of the vile Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, Dante, and stuff which was then the means of intellecMacaulay are resting, unmolested and dusty, tual debauchery to a wealthy few. upon the library shelf. Our question demands that we seek the means of cultivating a higher taste in the choice of books, and does not require us to ask what text-book contains most miscellaneous information packed in a given space. There was a time when love of reading in a child might be regarded as a hopeful sign of intellectual capacity. When books were few and costly; when very few of them were in any way intended for children in particular; when there were no children's papers or magazines. A child that inclined to read*Paper read before the Illinois State Teachers' Association, at Springfield, Dec. 27, 1877, by Prof. H. L. Boltwood, who has for some years been principal of the High School, at Princeton, Illinois. But at the present time, it is not safe to say that a love of reading is a hopeful sign, or a proof of a promising intellect. One must know what is read and how, before speaking with anything like approval of a craving appetite for printed matter. An inordinate appetite for green apples, or slate-pencils, or for clay, is not worse for the body than a craving for certain kinds of literature, unfortunately too common and too cheap, is for the mind. Not to speak of positively vicious, or openly immoral reading, which is so abundant and so persistently forced upon public attention; the lives of notorious criminals, the Police Gazettes, and other vile and pernicious things which are thrust in your face by train-boys, 66 or kept in the windows or on the counters of | booksellers who are called moral and upright men; not to speak of the terrible details of vice which often disgrace the columns of papers whose reputation is such that they could afford the luxury of a conscience;" a young person foraging for himself, without some special pains taken to guide his taste and judgment, may do himself positive injury even in a Sunday-school library, in which every book shall have been written with the avowed intention of teaching valuable moral or distinctively religious truth. Even to a careful reader, moderately versed in books, the difficulty of choosing the best is constantly increasing. In general, as people read more, they profit less. There are scores, and hundreds who take their daily novel almost as the toper does his drams, and almost as ruinously. There are others to whom the daily paper, even of the best kind, is a positive injury, because of its excessive demand upon their time. Our schools have done very much to create this appetite for reading. Are they doing what they ought to direct their pupils to healthful food for satisfying it? Are they in the position to do more without letting slip some of those things which the public seem now to demand? If they can do this work, how? Our limits of time admit but brief answers to these questions. 1. To the first, there is but one answer possible. They are not doing what ought to be done. The ability to select, to appreciate, to use, and to enjoy books is not in proportion to the acquired power to solve arthmetical problems, or to analyze sentences. I think this need not be discussed. I presume it will not be questioned. 2. Are the schools in position to do more in this direction without giving up what seems to be required of them? I say what seems to be required of them, designedly, because I think that much which is now taught in them could hardly give a satisfactory reason for its existence there. Why geography should have been taught so long to the exclusion of natural history; why, under the old regime, so much time was given to arithmetic and none to physiology, is not easy to understand. Why school hours should extend from 9 till 4 in all seasons of the year we can not say. Nor can we see why primary arithmetic and geography should be forced upon little children that can not read well enough to get the sense of the questions which they are called upon to anWe see no reason why bright children swer. who, in their homes, will read through a story book in a single evening, should spend from six to nine months on a smaller book while in the school-room, learning its almost meaningless, mechanical sentences, until they can repeat the whole book from beginning to end. More and better reading can be introduced in the school course by giving more time to it in the earlier part of the course. I have not time to develop this as I wish; but in speaking of methods to be used in cultivating literary taste, will touch upon this subject again. 3. And principally, How can the work be done? All agree that it is desirable to do. All admit that a school education ought to impart to its recipient something of taste to incline him to good reading, judgment in selecting books, ability to appreciate and enjoy them, and knowledge of the art of using them. All admit that books are a most important factor in that social and moral education that reaches beyond school life, and is more important than the ordinary lesson work. Some who know by happy experience the power, the comfort, the restfulness, of a good book, long, with a spirit of true benevolence, to transmit their own delight to their pupils. But objections are made to any effort; difficulties are suggested; it is said that we have neither the time, the books, nor the public sympathy which are necessary to successful work. In the first place, as I have already said, reading must receive more attention in the lower grades. Pupils should read more in a month than they now do in a year. They should read more stories, and fewer detached sentences. Fortunately we have good juvenile magazines, published monthly, possessing the important requisites of good paper, clear type, choice engravings, and interesting matter, ranging from the charming little Nursery and Little Folks up to St. Nicholas. There are several schools which are using these magazines with excellent results and with trifling expense. It costs far less to supply a school with these than with readers containing anything like an equal amount of reading matter. In using these books, the aim of the teacher should be largely to make the pupils master the sense fully and to read in an easy, natural way Even if the spelling is not at once perfect, let the children have something new to tempt them on, before they are disgusted with the tedious monotony of lessons too often repeated. I wonder if it has ever occurred to my fellow-teachers that all the reading matter of a ers. whole series of ordinary readers, as high up | school readers, and will serve for several generations of pupils. If the difficulty of selection be urged, let teachers and school authorities be stirred up to do this work earnestly and carefully, with the aid of the best talent of the community. I am fully persuaded that very few teachers and still fewer communities appreciate the educational value of a well-selected school library. If they did, I am sure we should have more of them and that they would be more used. A year of library reading, with general criticism, may be followed by the reading of some standard author with critical study. In a paper which I once read before the Association, published in the Illinois Teacher for 1871, I gave the books which I have used and the order in which they are read. Briefly I would say, Read with a class nothing that is not classic, and read exhaustively; with the closest grammatical analysis; with attention to position of words and arrangement of sentences as affecting clearness and emphasis; with development of all figures of speech; with study of all geographical, historical, biographical and mythological allusions; with special attention to derivation and composition of words; with study of synonyms, inquiring closely as to the reason why the author chooses one word rather than another; and above all, seeking to " read between the lines" as the phrase is; to see what fine and subtle thought may lurk in a seeming riddle, or an apparent paradox. Such teaching is twice blessed-it blesseth him that gives and him that takes." It is because of such close and persistent study that some of the ancient classics have become such a power among men-influencing, perhaps uncon 66 pervading so much of modern literature. One of At this point the teacher will have enough to do. He must train the class to notice in the books read any inconsistencies, contradic-sciously, so much of modern thought, and tions, or absurdities. He must test their judgment of probabilities. He must draw out their thoughts upon the characters presented, upon their fidelity to nature, whether they are the counterparts of those poople whom they know or see. The language put into the mouth of a character must be tested, to decide whether it is natural or not. By talks upon books, by comparison and judicious questioning, a class of intelligent pupils can be led on to make judgments of value, and to acquire the habit of deliberate and careful study of what they read. Knowing that they are to be held accountable, they will read, not merely for the story, but to grasp and retain plot, characters, language, style and moral. If any one objects to the cost of this, it may be answered that books suitable for this use cost little, if any, more than Permit me to recall a single fact in my own history. In my sophomore year in college, I attended a teachers' institute in Massachusetts, conducted by Dr. Barnes Sears, then secretary of the State Board of Education. his exercises has done much to shape my thinking, reading and teaching from that day onward. He took the opening passage of Robertson's Life of Charles V., and from it gave us a lesson in synonyms and choice of words. For example, in the sentence commencing "When the spirit of conquest led the armies of Rome beyond the Alps," why the spirit of conquest rather than the desire of conquest? Why conquest rather than victory? Why led rather than conducted? Why beyond rather than across the Alps? At least one of that class carried away new and last ing impressions of the value of a discriminat- | an equal space for language culture in all its ing choice of words, and the interest to be departments. In the lower grades, it claims found in the study of language. more than half the time. It is vastly more By such preliminary teaching, the pupil is important for general education that the trained to appreciate and to love good books; pupil should become an intelligent reader of to become impatient of careless, inaccurate, good literature, than that he become an acunnatural writing. He learns to question the countant or even an enthusiastic student of meaning of the author, and to distrust and natural history. Whatever else the teacher reject those books which have nothing to say. | may teach, he ought to be, to all his pupils, After this work is done, a text-book in a competent guide into the domain of books. literature may be introduced to advantage, Whatever studies he may neglect, he is not and the pupil may be made familiar with the justified in neglecting the study of books. great names in our own literature and that of "For other studies are neither for all times the world. He is prepared to recognize that nor for all ages, nor all places; but these it is unpardonable in a fairly educated person nourish youth, delight old age, grace our not to know something of those great think- prosperity, furnish a refuge and a solace in ers whose books have lighted up their re- our adversity, delight us at home, are no spective centuries; "those dead, but sceptred hindrance abroad, pass the night with us, go sovereigns, who still rule our spirits from with us on our journeyings, stay with us in their graves." As in learning geography our country solitude." well, he passes from the known to the unknown-from the little world of his daily thought to the great oceans and continents of the world beyond; so in literature, he pre pares himself by his own limited reading to send out his appreciative fancy, at least, toward the vast, and, by him, unexplored con tinents and oceans of the world of books. Great names in literature impress him now, because he has learned that there is a greatness of mind displayed in clear thought, and in successful marshaling of words, as well as in planning campaigns and marshaling armies. He has learned that a book may be more powerful than an army; that a nobler immortality may be won by the pen than by the sword. Therefore he is willing to study au. thors as he studies other great men. The most common fault in this study is the attempt to grasp too much-to fix in the memory names of unimportant books and of obscure authors. This should be most studiously avoided. Cut down unflinchingly the briefest text book, if it mentions a single author who is not really a man of mark and influence. It seems to me a waste of time to attempt to teach historic English Literature without a previous study of English History. The significance and power of many books is to a degree lost, unless one knows the time which either called them forth, or gave them form and shape. But how shall we find time for all this? Exactly as you do for mathematics. Because mathematical studies are popular, and easy to teach, they occupy one third of school work from the primary grades to the end, or nearly to the end, of the university course. I claim Chicago Educational Weekly. GOOD ADVICE TO TEACHERS. BY J. L. PICKARD. WHAT you are in yourselves is your WHA capital in starting. It would be unwise to throw this capital aside, however small it may be. Be yourselves, emended, improved, enlarged as time passes, but still and ever yourselves. To act the part of another successfully requires marked talent and long training, and then the actor personates a character as conceived by himself. The garb of Hamlet does not conceal the personality of Booth, nor do the rags of Rip Van Winkle hide Jefferson. Barrett and McWade are none the less masters because of different impersonations of the same characters. There is no substance in an echo, and nothing but amusement in its fragmentary repetitions. Growth. Stagnant individuality becomes extremely offensive. One may become hardened and dried in original form, and thus be nothing better than an individual brick. The teacher who is not conscious of power this year, of which he was ignorant last year, canf do his best work in penning a resignation., The limit of acquaintance with the details of the business part of the work may be reached, but the limit of personal power over the inner life of the child is not reached until the possibility of improvement on the part of the teacher no longer exists, and your experience will lead you to substitute for the last qualified phrase the significant word "Never." Study, narrowed to the topics of instruc tion, is not productive of the best growth. I sun. Pursue reputation as an end, and you Something outside of the school work will may be sure of walking into the darkness. engage the efforts of all who merit success. Not accretion, but assimilation, increases power. Human growth, and, above all, mental growth, is from within. Whatever calls the mental powers into exercise strengthens them, and at the same time facilitates their concentration upon the work immediately in hand. Seek eminence in one department of study, and you will the more surely succeed in the great end of all teaching arousing to activity the mind of the pupil. Devotion. The meanest employment is ennobled by the spirit of the workman. The drudgery of any labor is relieved by the purpose of the laborer to strive for the attainment of the highest ideal possible to his work. The privations of winter, the toils of spring, and the heats of summer, are forgotten in the enjoyment of the garnered harvests. Vagrant affection secures no friends and experiences no delight. Centred affection gives vigor to effort, satisfaction to desire, and rest to weariness. If circumstances are not suited to your choice, suit your choice to circumstances, until the latter can be changed or the former gratified. At all events make the best of all, and do your best in all. Lose the slave in the earnest devotee. Ambition. "Covet earnestly the best gifts." If there are places more desirable than your own, gain them by passing, not by pulling back, competitors: First deserve the place you seek, and then openly and honorably seek it when vacant. No ambition is more laudable than that which concerns itself with improving one's conditions by self-improvement. No contentment is more worthy than that which inspires the doing well of present duty, because of its bearing upon a better future. Labor onward with an eye upward. Remember that there are higher and lower places within the limits of your daily work. "Excelsior" is a motto as pertinent in one room as in a building of many rooms. The opportunities for gratifying a noble ambition are far more frequent than are the resignations of those whose positions are most attractive. There is no disgrace in failure, if it be not too oft repeated, nor chronic in its character. There is disgrace in yielding to failure, as well as in a stubborn determination to perpetuate it. Succeed or surrender. Character. Reputation is but a shadow which follows the man who moves toward the Character may be better or worse than reputation. The shadow represents only the outward form of the substance. It is of the inner life I would speak, and I would commend to you the possession of cool reason, calm judgment, unswerving fidelity to truth, resolute purpose to do and to maintain the right, warm sympathy, generous forbearance, willing self-denial, clear conscience, and, may I not add, intelligent trust in God-all of which are elements in the composition of a character which far transcends the best reputation. It is a true character which gives vigor to loyalty, breath to fraternity, strength to individuality, stability to growth, steadiness to devotion, a curb to ambition, and value to reputation. TIME AND EXPRESSION IN MUSIC. G. CAROTHERS. to 'N a former number of The Journal an at- of principles in the study of music. Time, as the measure of sound, bears the same relation to music that metre does to poetry; and as poetry is impossible without metre, so music is practically impossible without time. One physical difference between music and noise is that the one is produced by sonorous shocks which follow each other at regular intervals, and the other by an irregular succession of sonorous shocks, clearly teaching the first element of time— regularity—and demanding the attention and study of every musician, professional or amateur. Expression is the soul of music. It is the hidden power, which, under the control of an intelligent performer, causes us to forget the mechanical forms which the composer used to express his thought, and by means of its "inarticulate unfathomable speech, lead us to the edge of the Infinite, and let us for When Shakmoments gaze into that!" speare says: "The man that hath no music in himself Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, he conveys the same idea, to some extent, that Carlyle puts in his terse way, "The meaning |