The custom prevalent in the schools of dwelling a long time on small portions of Latin and Greek text must not be allowed to establish itself in the English work also. An English piece must be read and got through with. If we adopt Professor March's method of exhaustive questioning, we shall never arrive at any goal and shall never make English interesting. Work in English should be vigorous and rapid, taking many things for granted. The skilful teacher surmises when his pupils fail to understand a point rightly, and halts the column of march only on such occasions. That the reading of such selections as those here offered may go off smoothly and intelligently, due preparation should be made. The teacher should look over a few pages in advance and note the points at which special difficulties of any kind will arise. These points, as they require more elaborate investigation, he will separate from the text when he assigns the lesson, and he will exempt the class en masse from giving them attention. The text, thus temporarily cleared of the chief difficulties, is prescribed to all the class, who must work it out and be prepared on it at the next lesson. At the same time the special points of difficulty are dealt out to individuals, one to each, to be looked up and reported on. The interest of a class exercise is much enhanced if the individual pupils bring different contributions, so that each is listened to with curiosity on a fresh topic. Moreover, if all alike are required to make the same investigations, the reference books may not suffice to go round. All the obscure points are reported on, and all the pupils get the benefit of the explanation. Each pupil has had as much. research to make as he had time and opportunity for,

and the class can at once pass on to fresh woods and pastures new. In this way it is legitimately feasible to cover considerable ground in the class reading of English texts while pursuing strictly the method of research.

The points of special difficulty may well be looked up a few days in advance of the time when the class is to read as a lesson the passages where they occur, and these may in some cases be given to pupils as themes, which must be punctually written out, ready for reading at the precise moment when, being needed as elucidations, they will be appreciated and will be listened to with attention. The pupil who has such a theme to prepare will ordinarily need assistance in making his researches. To give this assistance is the teacher's business. The teacher must, accordingly, be prepared, when he assigns such a theme to a pupil, to say where the desired matter can be found. He must know whether the books that will have to be used are in the school library or must be looked for in the public library of the town. If the books are absolutely inaccessible to the pupils, the themes whose elaboration depends on these books must not be given out at all. In such case it is the teacher's privilege to present as a downright gift the matter which, in better circumstances, it would be more proper to let the pupils work for and earn the right to possess.

When a writer's language is understood and the purpose of his illustrations is appreciated, there remains to be considered the subject of his discourse, or the articulation of his thought. No writing whatever is wholly without inner connection of parts and some degree of orderly procedure in the progress of its argument.

But good writing inevitably has a carefully planned structure, by virtue of which it holds our attention to each phase of the subject in its due place, so that every portion of the exposition contributes to the intended result, and the final impression is clear and consistent.

Hence it becomes an important part of the class-room study of a writer to search for his plan, to note the topics of paragraphs and of larger divisions, and to formulate briefly his main theses. Good writing is

sure to be well paragraphed. A new paragraph means a transition to something new. What this something new and distinctly additional is, the attentive reader should be able to say. The pupil who has read a paragraph may be held to the task of summing it up in very few words. Or he may be called upon to announce its topic in advance in order to show that he has given his lesson careful study as well with regard to its thought as with regard to its language.

Mere reading, either oral or silent, even if accompanied with much definition of words and explanation of allusions, is apt to leave the learner uninformed about the very purpose which the writer had in view in composing his chapter or his book.

The school should prepare for life, and not for examinations. The memorizing method, the cram method, the note method, is good only for examinations. The English that pupils are destined to read for their entertainment and culture as mature men and women will not be annotated. It is right to keep in view the conditions that will actually exist. The habit of depending on notes is enfeebling. Books in the ancient languages are always read with the help of notes, and books in the ancient languages have accordingly ceased to be read

except by a caste of special devotees whose work in life continues to have some relation to the pedagogic function. But all men and women read English books. To read English books with intelligence, the habit of consulting the various collateral helps, of drawing upon the stores of related knowledge, is of all importance. It is doubtless a trouble and annoyance to use the dictionary. But only by using the dictionary can one attain to a command of the English language. He who cannot bring himself often to turn aside from the book he holds in his hand to the other books on his shelves finds himself limited in his reading to the weakest and shallowest books of the day. He can read no history, no biography, no travels; he can read nothing whatever that is old, nothing that was produced from the stores of large and generously equipped minds, nothing that reflects the life and manners of its generation, nothing that employs a vocabulary richer and more varied than that which serves the petty uses of every day.

Some of the books of reference which a high-school library should contain for the use of its English classes are the following:

Murray's New English Dictionary, now, and destined for many years to be, in course of publication.

The Century Dictionary.

Webster's International Dictionary. Among other useful things, the new International contains a revised edition of Wheeler's Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction.

A good encyclopædia. The Britannica is not too large. Even the best will often be found to give no help.

The Century Cyclopedia of Names. A book of the utmost utility in the school-room.

Adams's Dictionary of English Literature.

Brewer's Reader's Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots, and Stories.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, giving the derivation, source, or origin of common phrases, allusions, and words that have a tale to tell.

Taine's English Literature.

Ten Brink's History of English Literature.

Stopford A. Brooke's History of Early English Literature.
Saintsbury's History of Elizabethan Literature.

Gosse's History of Eighteenth Century Literature.

Cruden's Concordance to the English Bible.

Bartlett's Concordance to Shakespeare.

Bradshaw's Concordance to the Poetical Works of Milton.

Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature.

Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature.

Chambers's Book of Days.

History for Ready Reference: J. N. Larned, Springfield, Mass., 1894-5.

Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History.

Knight's Popular History of England.

Green's Short History of the English People: Illustrated ed.
Gardiner's Student's History of England.

Hare's Walks in London.
Baedeker's Great Britain.
Baedeker's London.

The books here named are given as specimens of reference books proper. Their number could be increased to any extent desirable. But reference will almost as often be fruitfully made to books that do not come under this denomination. Good editions should be procured, as fast as the means of the school allow, of the chief English writers. It is almost daily the case that an obscure point in the selection that is being studied can be explained by reference to some other work of the same writer. This often happens to readers of Macaulay. In works of history, moreover, the library cannot be too well stocked. Both the classes in history and those in English will find great furtherance in an abundance of the standard works of history.