get more work and more willing work and more effective work out of his pupils in English than in anything else has mistaken his profession.

English is the study above all others which must set the pupil to thinking. Thoughtfulness one would expect to find the supreme and distinguishing characteristic of a college community. The thoughtful attitude of mind may in a sense be called the test of a liberal education. Yet it is astonishing how many men live for four years within college walls and receive their degrees at the end who have never learned to think for themselves, and how little it is true that the college atmosphere is necessarily a thoughtful atmosphere. Opinions are too often the result of environment, of inherited principles and prejudices, credulously accepted and blindly defended. Many men are afraid to think; it is uncomfortable business, and leads no one knows whither; better rest satisfied with the opinions and principles and beliefs of other good respectable people; otherwise you will probably become a crank. Now if a man has not attained to the thoughtful attitude of mind has not learned to observe and ponder and judge for himself, and to be fond of thinking, before he leaves college, it is not likely that he will ever learn afterward. But it is not necessary that he should wait until he gets to college before he begins to learn. The boy who is interested in books and reads along general lines will grow into the thoughtful, the broadly and truly educated man. The teacher who makes his pupils thoughtful confers upon them the greatest benefit in the teacher's power to bestow. And what for this purpose can compare with English in the opportunity that it gives? It is the gateway to a whole new world the world of ideas, the world in which one escapes from pettiness, and vulgarity, and prejudice, and enters the freemasonry of high and noble society. Not

that it is by any means the only gateway; but the preparatory school teacher of English is dealing more directly with thought in its application to life, and with far greater variety and range of thought, than the teacher of any other subject. Literature covers the whole range of unspecialized human activity. Its field is nature and life. Novels, essays, poems to be taught, their thought to be made the thought of the pupil, and all the wealth of illustration and figure and suggestion to be explored-how can literature be taught without teaching the pupil to think?

The experienced and skillful master will need no directions how to make effective a subject so rich with opportunity. But the introduction of English into the college requirements is so recent that it has not found a method agreed upon in general outline by all teachers; each must find his way for himself, and often lose precious time in experiment. There is a danger which confronts editor and teacher alike. It is that he may do too much of the work which the pupil, if he is to receive the benefit, must do himself. If the pupil is to learn to think he must form opinions, not learn them. At every step, it is true, questions rise before him which he cannot settle definitely and finally for himself for years; perhaps can never settle; yet he ought to be thinking about them. His curiosity is continually to be stimulated and awakened, not satisfied and put to sleep. He should be taught the use of books of reference, too, that he may not be helpless when reading by himself with texts unannotated for the convenience of laziness and an examination cram. And on the other hand, it is unnecessary to discuss the question whether it would be profitable to require the pupil to hunt down every allusion for himself, since it is manifestly impossible for him to do so and cover the ground which the college entrance requirement demands. His master or his notes

must often tell him what he needs to know to understand his text, not merely tell him where to look to find that knowledge for himself.

It has been the editor's effort in preparing this little pamphlet to keep in view the practical necessities of the case, while at the same time avoiding the Charybdis of that most detestable of pseudo-educational works a device for enabling pupils to cram sufficient unassimilated knowledge to enable them, with the smallest possible expenditure of energy and time, to pass a given examination. Much has been left for the boy or girl to do, and much for the discretion of the teacher to select, expand, or omit. There is no pretence of having exhausted the possibilities of the essay; it has been attempted only to suggest some of the ways in which it may be employed for the kind of teaching which the requirement of English for the college entrance examinations was intended to demand.

MILTON.

(AUGUST, 1825.)

Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrinâ Christianâ libri duo posthumi. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON, translated from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc.: 1825.

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TOWARD the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the state-papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled 5 the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the long lost essay on the doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under 15 the suspicions of the Government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the 20 adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet.

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Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honorable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant toward those 10 of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There There is no elaborate imitation 15 of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice 20 sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to use many words

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother-tongue; and, where he is least happy, 25 his failure seems to rise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients.

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a 30 powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly among the