of India." But even in this I do not recollect any description of the denser portions of the jungle those dark thickets and gloomy recesses of rank vegetation, where a hundred varieties of ferns, canes, and palms entangle one another in bewildering confusion, as they climb towards the upper height of the immense forest trees; where the sunlight can scarcely pierce through, except to shoot down here and there in shafts of brilliant light that strike the sand or the pool below-and where, in many places, the foot of man has never trod, and the bison, the tiger, and the elephant, alone dispute for dominion. I lately made two shooting trips to the jungles of lower Burmah, and each time, in the midst of the greatest hardships, the forest scenery had the power to force itself upon the notice as seeming, each day, more and more impressive and magnificent. At such times both the silence and the strange sounds of the jungles, each in their different way, combine to affect the sportsman; the occasional weird hootings of the monkeys in the tree-tops; the distant flap, flap, of an elephant's ears breaking in upon the perfect stillness as you approach the herd, or perhaps, instead, the penny-trumpet-like squeak which an nounces its proximity; and, as the day wears on, the stillness suddenly broken in upon by the whirring and soon almost deafening sound with which with one accord the insects revive after the heat of the afternoon; all these influences combine to produce an effect which those who have not experienced them will find difficult to imagine, and those who have experienced them must find hard to describe. Apropos of the wild elephants, the herds of these animals are doing much mischief in some parts to the native communities living near their haunts, destroying their crops continuously and their lives occasionally, and I cannot help thinking that an even better method of abating the mischief than that of shooting them might be found in their systematic capture on a large scale. Burmah as a field for sport is improving, for the quieting down of the country is rendering it possible to travel in regions where a short while ago an armed escort was a necessity, and it contains many animals such as the sine (a species of wild cattle), the tummin (or brow-antlered deer), and others that are peculiar to the country. One great drawback, however, in con nection with shooting there is the very great difficulty one has in procuring natives acquainted with the habits and pursuit of the local game. To the above list of the attractions of Burmah many more might be added, to induce the traveller passing that way to take a look at our new possession, but the limits of a magazine article preclude their being entered upon; and I can only conclude by saying, that I feel pretty sure that any one visiting it for the first time will carry away very agreeable and very varied memories of an extremely interesting and quite unique country and people. B. C. F. From Good Words. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF READING. BY THE REV. R. F. HORTON, M.A. WE are as a rule very particular about the people with whom we associate; there are few things which more agitate the minds of British parents than the society in which their children are to move. About the principle of discrimination it is not necessary to say anything. We all of us have some principle of our own; there are people whom we want to know, there are others whom we treat with reserve; there are some whom we keep at arm'slength. This is the essence of our dig. nity-or, let us call it, our self-respect. When our principle of discrimination is false, our dignity may become undignified, the dignity merely of a flunkey; but when our principle of discrimination is sound, when we want to know the good and noble, and are indifferent to the vulgar distinctions of wealth and spurious rank, the soul becomes strong and pure by virtue of its discerning choice and rigorous selfrestraint in the matter of companionship. We may observe, however, a difference as our character ripens and our moral form becomes set. In youth we must shun the vicious and the weak, counting their very presence a danger and their breath a miasma; later on we can pass unharmed among men of all sorts, securely assimilating what is good and rejecting what is bad; and at last, by the grace of God, we may become so firmly knit in all purity and truth and charity that our presence among men of the most degraded type will be harmless to ourselves, but service. able to them. We are all agreed, then, that the society which we affect is not a matter of indiffer 4 ence; it must be at all times wisely chosen, its effects upon us must be scrupulously watched, its tendencies to deflect us from the appointed way must be rigorously checked and valiantly frustrated. Now the object of the present essay is to show that in the power of reading we have admission to society of all kinds, to society of all ages; that our intercourse with men and women through the written page is often more intimate than that which we hold with living people; that the influence which these invisible minds exercise over us is incalculable; and that therefore the choice which we must bring to bear in the selection of what we read should be even more intelligent, more earnest, more severe than that which regulates the selection of our companions and friends. guarded against misunderstanding, or a papers, no less than in society, one needs an eye which is impatient of tinsel and penetrative of solid worth. The idea is old and even trite, it is the application which is not so trite. While readers were chiefly or entirely the cultivated few, who approached books with a carefully trained intelligence, and with all the composure and fastidiousness of culture as among living men; in books and ture, the caution was hardly needed; but when everybody reads, when books are free to us as the air we breathe, when all of us are thrown into the crowd of authors which jostle one another in the crowded streets of literature, it is necessary to caution the unwary against those besmirching persons who may rub against them unawares and to suggest by what methods it is possible to quit the mixed throng of the thoroughfares, and to find in quiet and wholesome places the companionship with the good and the great by which the soul can thrive. No better preface can be given to what is now to be said than these wise and beautiful words of Mr. Ruskin: "Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable-boy, when you may talk with kings and queens, while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the dead." This passage must be In the power of reading we have admission to society of all kinds, to society of all ages. There is something quite pathetic in the sight of young men and women reading their scrappy and titillating newspapers, or their blood-curdling and sensational novels, when they might be at the same time holding high converse with the strong master spirits of humanity; might be "laughing with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade instead of guffawing with the clown who grimaces and holds the pit for a day and a morrow; might be moving in the fields of fancy with Shakespeare, and learning from that wise spirit the mysterious secrets of life, hearing the "sweet, sad music of humanity" instead of losing all the capacity of genuine feeling by submitting to the unreal raptures, the base alarms, and the subtle poisons of popular fiction. But it is not quite true to say that admission to that society of the noble is open to all. There is need of effort, of patience, of discipline to approach great minds in literature. Any one can read King Solomon's Mines," but not every one can read "The Antiquary; any one can read Mr. Gilbert's songs, but not every one can read Milton's sonnets. The present writer once knew an athletic man who made a notable remark. 'The conversation turned on a discussion whether it was better to read 66 "Hamlet" or to see Shakespeare. Our move his soul, and until the strong music athletic friend determined that it would of that lofty verse has sounded in his ears be better to see Shakespeare, on the sin-like the tumult of seas, and the low murgular ground that "it would take less mur of continuous streams; and then Miltime." Now, beyond all question, it takes ton will lead him, as Virgil led Dante, time and energy and active thought to through all the circles of Inferno, Purgahold intercourse with those great authors torio, Paradiso, without any taint to his who have attained their greatness by the spirit or faltering of his mind. And then expenditure of time and energy and active - if this vein of dogmatism may yet be thought. These monarchs of literature pardoned - when youth is setting into are only at home with those who can don manhood, let him turn to Wordsworth. their own regal dress. There are some Dismissing that childish judgment which minds which, for lack of use and training, calls Wordsworth childish, let him ap feel more at home in the servants' hall proach gently those shorter poems which than at the master's board. And here at first seem the more attractive, and in comes in the responsibility of reading; it them let him meditate a little until "The is our duty to nerve ourselves to encoun- mighty being seems awake." Then let ters with the great; we are to put on the him read with patience, and not hurriedly, livery of the master minds. those longer works, which are not so much But it may be said, Who are the master poems as the plain, straightforward utterminds? By what mark are we to distin-ance of some vital truths which it concerns guish them? How are we to discharge us all to know, "The Prelude " and "The our responsibility in the absence of those Excursion." Let the grandeur and integ. regal insignia with which alone we are rity of Wordsworth's harmonious nature familiar? Here is an acknowledged diffi- become apparent, let the charm of a simculty. And in it may be rooted a plea for plicity which shrinks from ornament and reading more of those writers whose place of a passionate truthfulness which is not in literature is fixed, and less of those afraid of seeming bare and bald be felt, current writers who have not yet passed let the taste and judgment be in this clear the stern examination of time, or received air braced and purified, and it will be the Hall mark of that final criticism which found that a discerning spirit has entered is not local or of the age, but universal in and taken possession of the soul, so and eternal. For Englishmen, at any that it is no longer so doubtful as it once rate, there is little excuse if they go wrong. appeared, who and what are the master There have risen in our heavens so many spirits of all time. There is a certain note constant stars, that by their steady and which is quickly perceived in the minds glowing light more mutable objects may which are whole and strong, it is like the be fixed. And rather than seek inclusive- deep sound of a bell, which, though there ness to the loss of definiteness it may be are all varieties of tone and compass and well to dogmatize. Let a man while he vibration, can never be produced where is young and yet uninformed, and while the metal is base, or where the bell is the uncertainty of conflicting authorities cracked. This note has been caught by leaves him in some doubt to whom he many of us in the study of the great masshould attach his reverence and affection, ters of classical antiquity, Homer and take up his Milton and approach through Thucydides, Sophocles and Plato, Virgil the flowery gardens of "Comus," "L'Al- and Tacitus; but it may be caught even legro," "Il Penseroso," that wide and more readily from the great masters of lofty upland of "Paradise Lost,' ""Para- English, from Spenser and Shakespeare, dise Regained," on whose breezy slopes from Bacon and Raleigh, from Milton and he will gain strength to read the "Samson Hooker, from Addison and Johnson and Agonistes." Let him commune with the Burke, from Burns and Wordsworth and spirit of Milton and learn by a detach- Scott, from Helps, John Stuart Mill, Carment from the petty controversies of his lyle, not to approach any nearer to the time, to gain some insight into him whose noble company of the living. "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." Let him not murmur because the excitement of the pursuit seems small, and the air of the uplands is at first chilly and stupefying; let him press on, until the magnitude of that great mind has assumed definite proportions, until the stirring power of its moral energy has begun to | And as Sir Arthur Helps has been mentioned incidentally, let one of his wise counsels find a place here. "Every man and every woman who can read at all,” he says, "should adopt some definite purpose in their reading-should take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions, seeking air and light for influence. Here, on the other hand, is a religious youth who opens a mere magazine article written against his faith; he throws off the early influences of home like a mantle, and plunges thenceforward into the "sunless gulf of doubt," with the unspeakable morasses at the bottom. Here, again, a pure and untainted mind will take up a book which is foul, prurient, and suggestive, and the very course of nature is set on fire; a turning-point comes, and the old innocence is gone forever. In the quaint stories of an older day the Power of Evil would shape himself like a tiny animal, and effect an entrance into an unsuspecting body; now he finds himself between the dainty covers of a book, or lurks in the brief paragraphs of a licentious journal, and obtains an easy and unobserved entrance into incautious minds. heroic soul which has been playing upon the springs of thought and feeling. You may have observed, even in your Now we come to observe more particu- friends, changes from day to day, which larly that between an author and a careful are like the shadows chasing one another reader an intimacy is established of a kind on the hillside. A mind naturally gentle which is rarely possible in the actual in- and sympathetic passes into a phase of tercourse of life. An author can creep into cynicism; thinks it, for the time, the corthe soul, and is the more readily admitted rect thing to question every one's motives, because his approaches seem so silent and and to doubt whether simplicity and sinunintentional. The Bible is the most in- cerity have any visible existence on this timate of all religious influences. St. planet. You find on inquiry that your Paul, for example, approaches us more friend has been reading “Vanity Fair,” or a nearly than the preacher who addresses book as cynical, without any of Thackeray's us every week from the pulpit. Those saving soundness and tenderness. Or, on nameless psalmists whose writings have the other hand, one who has been hitherto been preserved among the Psalms of lethargic and indifferent to all noble enterDavid, are more living, speak more di- prise, seems to be fired with great thoughts rectly to us, than the people whom we of service and devotion. You find that the meet in the streets or in the railway car-change is all due to the biography of an riage. We may pass the time of day and nod a smile to a man every morning for twenty years and not know so much of But if these companions in sober bindhim as we know of that passionate soul ings are so potent over us for good or for who cried unto the Lord out of the depths, ill, is it not obviously necessary to chaland waited for him as the watchmen wait lenge them sharply before we allow them for the morning (Ps. cxxx.). But what to come to close quarters? May we not the Bible is in a peculiar degree, other practise here that dignified exclusiveness books are in a less degree. There is even which elsewhere we are only too ready to a touch of terror in opening a book, that a practise? Every book should be formally man should be able to come into this introduced to us, not by its own introducgrappling connection with us; if he is a tion, but by some independent and trusttruthful spirit he can make us blush with worthy authority. Parents should be shame, tremble, shed tears as we read. more particular in getting testimonials for We take the silent, innocent-seeming vol- the literature which comes into the hands ume into our hands, and when we put it of their children than in learning the chardown we shall never again be what we acter of the schools and the school comwere before. What a spell the writer panions. The writer remembers to this weaves! what a miraculous power he ex-day the impression made upon his boyish ercises! For, to pass to this other point, mind when his father emphatically forbade the influence the book exercises over us him to read " Don Juan," saying that it is incalculable. St. Augustine opened the might inflict a serious injury upon the book, and one single sentence changed spirit. For more than twenty years that him from the brilliant, godless, self-satis- famous poem remained taboo to him, and fied rhetorician into a powerful religious | when at last he read it, he thanked God From The Leisure Hour. A MUSICAL VILLAGE IN YORKSHIRE. ABOUT forty years ago a manufacturer at Eccleshill near Bradford, who was fond of music, set his eye on a weaver who lived at Horsforth, near by, and who was one of the singers at the Wesleyan Chapel there. This manufacturer was interested in the New Connection Chapel at Eccleshill, and he wanted a singer. The weaver in question, Fawcett by name, soon received an offer of employment from this music-lover. He thereupon moved to Eccleshill, and became the founder of a remarkable family of musicians, who are known all over the north of England as excellent orchestral players. for the wisdom of a father which had as it is better to go friendless than to have saved him from passing through those false friends, consider that it is better to shameless pages before his moral frame go bookless than to read bad books. God, was knit, and the power of discrimination nature, man, are accessible to thee, read had come with the slow discipline of the them; the Bible, Milton, Wordsworth, are years. But long after the paternal author-accessible to thee, try to read them; and ity is no longer available and indeed, for for the rest, where the heart ardently seeks most of us, up to the very end it would for wisdom the wise are not far away. be well for us to expect some adequate guarantee from all printed matter which lays claim to come into close quarters with the soul. You shall do wisely to learn how few are the writers to whom you can safely surrender yourself, how few the guides whom you can follow with closed or even half-closed eyes. And if this applies to books of some standing, if we need, for instance, to understand who and what Hume and Macaulay are before we read them with instantaneous and uncorroborated assent, if we require some_certificate from Mill or from George Eliot before we yield to the author our allegiance as well as our admiration, how much more does it behove us to be critical and even fastidious in approaching that catch-penny literature, in the daily and weekly press, or that excitation of the baser passions in ephemeral books, which form the staple of In a recent journey northwards I some unfortunate people's reading! Let stopped a night at Bradford for the speit be realized once for all that a mind de- cial purpose of making acquaintance with bauched and gulled by the dull tirades of these plain, sturdy Yorkshire folk and of a one-sided party newspaper, or a mind hearing the story of their lives. The surrendered to a faction in politics or reli- Great Northern train lands one in a few gion, and fed only on the morsels dished minutes at Eccleshill station, and thence up to it by one-eyed partisans, becomes the walk to the top of the hill is soon permanently degenerate, and finally inca- accomplished. What a lovely view spreads pable of clear vision or free thinking. If before us! The chimneys of Bradford we have learnt the meaning of "party "have been left behind, and we are in the and "faction," and if we distinctly label land of dales and moors, of wood and our newspaper, pamphlet, tract, sermon, stream. There is scarcely a yard of level or speech with its appropriate title before ground, and one can understand how the we read it, a sound mind may escape with-hardy, robust natures of these hill-men are out any permanent injury. But even formed by their physical surroundings. under these more favorable conditions it is As we sit in the old-fashioned, comforthardly wise to read party politics without able house of Joseph Fawcett, with a great constant reference to those impartial mas-oak beam crossing the ceiling, various ters of political fact and theory, whose members of the clan Fawcett are standing judgments are raised above the suspicion or sitting around. Most interesting of of bias; nor is it safe to read any theological literature at all without constant study of the Book which is too full of God to be theological, and too much penetrated with truth to decide in absolute favor of any partial or transitory system. And if it be asked, Who then shall stand to us in loco parentis? Who shall assure in our maturity what we may read? The answer to be given cannot be altogether unequivocal. Let the wise decide, until thy own wisdom has become manifest to the wise as well as to thyself; and if the wise are inaccessible to thee, then all, by his venerable appearance, is the old father, progenitor of the race, tall and spare, seventy-six years of age, yet clear of eye and mind, and full of pleasant recollections of long ago. In his young days women did not sit in the singing pews at the chapels. It would not have been considered becoming. He himself was a tenor, and learnt to read music by the old fa sol la system which prevailed in the time of Shakespeare. An old member of the Bradford Festival Choral Society, he went to London with the choir and sang with them before the queen. He plays |