CHAPTER III

LITERARY MATERIALS FOR THE FIVE UPPER GRADES

There is great abundance and variety of choice reading matter suitable for the grades from the fourth to the eighth inclusive. The best sets of reading-books have drawn from this rich material, but no series of readers can compass adequately the field. Some of the longer classical stories and poems have been incorporated into readers, but a single set of readers cannot be made large enough to contain a quarter of the valuable reading matter which should be furnished in these grades. The large publishing houses now supply, at moderate expense, in small and convenient book form, a great variety of the very best complete masterpieces. In order to show more clearly the richness and variety of this material, we will discuss briefly the principal kinds of reading matter which are distributed through these five grades. We assume that during the first three years of school life children have learned how to read, having mastered the forms and symbols of printed language. At the beginning of the fourth grade, therefore, they are prepared to read some of those choice literary products which constitute a part of the permanent literature of the world. After having collected and arranged these products, we find that they fall into several distinctly marked classes.

1. The Myths.

These include such stories as Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales," Peabody's "Old Greek Folk Stories," Kingsley's "Greek Heroes," "The Story of Ulysses," Bryant's translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," Pope's "Homer," and many other prose and poetic renderings of the Greek myths.

Another group of myths include Mabie's "Norse Stories," "Heroes of Asgard," "Siegfried," "Myths of Northern Lands," Skinner's "Readings in Folk Lore," and many forms of the Norse myths. The story of "Hiawatha" belongs also to this group, while some of the earlier English and Roman myths belong to the same class.

The choicest of these mythical stories are distributed as reading matter through the fourth and fifth grades. They constitute a large share of the most famous literature of the great civilized nations. It is worth while to name over the virtues of these stories and poems.

They have sprung directly out of the people's life, they are race products, worked over from age to age by poetic spirits, and finally gathered into enduring form by a Homer, Virgil, or Spenser. The best of our later poets and prose masters have employed their finest skill in rendering them into simple and poetic English, as Bryant, Kingsley, Longfellow, Pope, Hawthorne, Palmer, Tennyson, Church, and many more.

They are the best descriptions we have of the customs, ideas, and dress, the homes, habits, and motives, of the ancestral races. Many other sources, as temples, ruins, tombs, coins, etc., help to explain this early history; but this literature calls it again into life and puts meaning into all other sources of knowledge.

The influence which this early literature has had upon later historical growth of the great races is overwhelming, and is plain to the eyes of even unscholarly persons. The root from which the marvellous tree of Greek civilization grew is seen in Homer's poems.

In these myths we find those commanding characters which typify the strength and virtues of the race, as Achilles, Ulysses, Siegfried, Penelope, Thor, Apollo, Theseus, Hiawatha, Orpheus, Diana, Vulcan, Prometheus, and the Muses.

A close acquaintance with these creative ideas of the early world is necessary to an understanding of all subsequent life and literature. And it is not merely the names of Greek divinities and definitions of their character and qualities which put meaning into the numberless allusions of modern writers. One reason why many modern thinkers smile at the triteness and childishness of Greek fable is, that they have not caught the spirit and meaning of the Greek story. The great masters of thought, like Goethe, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, and Bryant, have seen deeper.

It is, moreover, in childhood, during the early school years especially, that we may best appreciate and enjoy these poetic creations of an early world. It is hardly to be expected that people whose youth has been clamped into the mould of commonplace and sensuous facts, and whose later years have been crusted over with modern materialism and commercialism, should listen with any patience to Orpheus and the Muses, or even to the wood notes of Pan.

We hardly need to dwell upon the idea that the old heroic myths are the delight of boys and girls, and that this sympathy for the myth is the foundation of its educative power. Nor is it the purpose of the school to warp the minds of children into this one channel of growth. The historical and scientific studies run parallel with the myth, and give strength for realities.

It is not difficult to see that music, the drama, and the fine arts spring from these old myths as from their chief source. They furnish motive to many of the greatest works of dramatist, composer, painter, and sculptor, in all the ages since. Æschylus and the Greek dramatists, Goethe and Wagner, Fénelon and Shakespeare, drew abundantly from these sources.

A few of the striking characters of this great age of heroic myths should be treated with such fulness as to stand out clearly to the children and appeal to the heart as well as to the head. Ulysses and Siegfried stand in the centre of two of the chief stories, and exemplify great qualities of character, strength, wisdom, and nobleness of mind.

In the third grade the children have had an oral introduction to some of the old stories, and have had a spirited entrance to Mythland. This oral treatment of the stories is a fitting and necessary prelude to the reading work of the fourth and fifth grades. It is more fully discussed, together with the art of the story-teller, in "The Special Method in Primary Reading and Story."

Closely related to the myths, and kindred in spirit, are such choice reading materials as "The Arabian Nights," "King of the Golden River," Stockton's "Fanciful Tales," "The Pied Piper," and a number of shorter poems and stories found in the collections recommended for fourth and fifth grades. Some of Hawthorne's and Irving's stories belong also to this group.

2. Ballads and Traditional Stories.

A somewhat distinct group of the best reading for fourth and fifth grades is found in the historical ballads and national legends from the early history of England, Germany, Italy, and France. They include such selections as "Sir Patrick Spens," "The Ballads of Robin Hood," "Horatius," "Bannock-burn," "The Heart of the Bruce," "The Story of Regulus," of "Cincinnatus," "Alfred the Harper," and many more. In the list of books recommended for children's reading are several ballad books, Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," "The Book of Golden Deeds," "Tales from English History," and several others, with great variety of poem and story. Many of these selections are short and spirited and well suited to awaken the strongest enthusiasm of children. They are sometimes in dialogue form, both in prose and verse, have strong dramatic action, and are thus helpful in variety and force of expression. There is also much early history and national spirit involved. The old historical ballads and traditions have great educative value. They are simple, crude, and powerful, and awaken the spirit to receive the message of heroism. In her introduction to the "Ballad Book," Katharine Lee Bates says, "For these primitive folk-songs, which have done so much to educate the poetic sense in the fine peasantry of Scotland--that peasantry which has produced an Ayreshire Ploughman and an Ettric Shepherd--are assuredly,

"'Thanks to the human heart by which it lives,'

among the best educators that can be brought into our schoolrooms."

"The Lays of Ancient Rome," the "Ballads," and the "Tales from English History" belong to the heroic series. Though far separated in time and place, they breathe the same spirit of personal energy, self-sacrifice, and love of country. They reveal manly resistance to cruelty and tyranny. We may begin this series with a term's work upon Macaulay's "Lays" and a few other choice stories in prose and verse. Thereafter we may insert other ballads, where needed, in connection with history, and in amplification of longer stories or masterpieces like Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," and "Marmion." In the fifth grade, children are of an age when these stories of heroism in olden days strike a responsive chord. They delight in such tales, memorize them, and enter into the full energy of their spirited reproduction. The main purpose at first is to appreciate their thought as an expression of history, tradition, and national life. A complete and absorbing study of a single series of these ballads, as of Macaulay's, supplies also an excellent standard of comparison for other more or less similar episodes in the history of Switzerland, Greece, England, and America.

These historical legends merge almost imperceptibly into the historical tales of early English, Roman, and French or German history. The patriarchal stories of the Old Testament furnish the finest of early history stories and should be included in these materials. "The Old Stories of the East," and "Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language" are among the best.

3. Stories of Chivalry.

Tales of chivalry, beginning with "Arthur and his Round Table Knights," "Roland and Oliver," and other mediæval tales, have a great attraction for poets and children. Such books are included in our lists as "The Court of King Arthur," the "Story of Roland," "Tales of Chivalry," "The Boys' King Arthur," the "Age of Chivalry," and "The Coming of Arthur" and "Passing of Arthur." There are also many shorter poems touching this spirit of chivalry in the Ballad literature. The character and spirit of King Arthur as revealed in the matchless music of Tennyson should find its way to the hearts of children before they leave the school. Like Sir Galahad, he could say,

"My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure."

4. Historical Stories and Poems.

In the fifth and sixth grades children should begin to read some of the best biographical and historical stories of America and of European countries. Of these we have excellent materials from many lands and periods of time, such as Higginson's "American Explorers," Morris's "Historical Tales" (both American and English), "Stories of American Life and Adventure," "Stories of Our Country," "Pioneer History Stories," "Ten Boys on the Road from Long Ago," "The Story of the English," "Stories from Herodotus," "Pilgrims and Puritans," Hawthorne's "Biographical Stories," "Stories from American Life," and others.

In the oral history lessons given on alternate days in fourth grade (see special method in history) we have made a spirited entrance to American history through the pioneer stories of the Mississippi Valley. These should precede and pave the way for classic readings in American history. In the fifth grade, the stories of Columbus and of the chief navigators, also the narratives of the Atlantic coast pioneers, are told. The regular history work of the sixth grade should be a study of the growth of the leading colonies during the colonial period and the French and Indian Wars.

In the fifth grade we may begin to read some of the hero narratives of our own pioneer epoch as rendered by the best writers; for instance, Higginson's "American Explorers," "Pilgrims and Puritans," "Stories of Our Country," and "Grandfather's Chair." They are lifelike and spirited, and introduce us to the realism of our early history in its rugged exposure and trials, while they bring out those stern but high ideals of life which the Puritan and the Cavalier, the navigator, the pioneer hunter, and explorer illustrate. Higginson's collection of letters and reports of the early explorers, with their quaint language and eye-witness descriptions, is strikingly vivid in its portraiture of early scenes upon our shores. Hawthorne, in "Grandfather's Chair," has moulded the hardy biography of New England leaders into literary form.

5. Great Biographies.

In addition to the shorter biographical stories just mentioned, as children advance into the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, they should make a close acquaintance with a few of the great biographies. There is an abundance of excellent American biographies, but we should limit ourselves to those most important and best suited to influence the character of young people. It is necessary also to use those which have been written in a style easily comprehended by the children. Some of the best are as follows: Scudder's "Life of Washington," Franklin's "Autobiography," Hosmer's "Life of Samuel Adams," and the lives of John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Lincoln in the "Statesman Series." There are two fairly good books of Lincoln's early life for children. There are also many shorter biographies included in the books recommended for regular or collateral reading.

In style and content the story of Franklin is one of the best for children. The "Autobiography" of Franklin has many graphic touches from American life. His intense practical personality, his many-sidedness and public spirit, make up a character that will long instruct and open out in many directions the minds of the young. His clear sense and wisdom in small affairs as in great, and the pleasing style of his narrative, are sufficiently characteristic to have a strong personal impression. It will hardly be necessary to take the whole of the "Autobiography," but the more attractive parts, leaving the rest to the private reading of children. "Poor Richard's Almanac" intensifies the notion of Franklin's practical and everyday wisdom, and at the same time introduces the children to a form of literature that, in colonial days, under Franklin's patronage, had a wide acceptance and lasting influence in America.

Plutarch's "Lives" furnish a series of great biographies which grammar school children should become well acquainted with. The lives of American writers and poets should be brought to the attention of children in conjunction with their productions. "The Children's Stories of American Literature" and the introductory chapters of many of the masterpieces furnish this interesting and stimulating material. It should not be neglected by pupils and teachers. For older pupils and for teachers several of Macaulay's "Essays" are valuable, and the style is strikingly interesting. For example, the essays on Samuel Johnson, Lord Chatham, Milton, Addison, and Frederick the Great. Motley's "Essay on Peter the Great" and Carlyle's "Essay on Burns" are of similar interest and value. "The Schönberg Cotta Family" is valuable in the upper grammar grades. Most of this kind of reading must be outside reference work if it is done at all. Teachers should, first of all, enrich their own experience by these readings, occasionally bring a book to the class from which selections may be read, and, secondly, encourage the more enthusiastic and capable children to this wider field of reading.

6. Historical Poems and Pictures of American Life.

Some of the best American poems and prose masterpieces are fine descriptions of American life and manners, in different parts of the country and at various times. Such are: "Courtship of Miles Standish," "Tales of the White Hills," "Snow-Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," and "Sleepy Hollow." "The Gentle Boy," "Mabel Martin," "Giles Corey," "Evangeline," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and some of the great biographies, like those of Samuel Adams, Franklin, Washington, and Lincoln, are also fine descriptions of home life in America. The same may be said of some of the masterpieces of English and European literature, for example, "Ivanhoe," "Roger de Coverley," "The Christmas Carol," "Vicar of Wakefield," "William Tell," "Silas Marner," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and "Schönberg Cotta Family."

The culture value of these pictures of home and domestic life for young people is surpassingly great. Gradually their views are broadened, and they may be imbued with those social, home-bred qualities and virtues so fundamental in human life.

Irving's stories and Longfellow's "Miles Standish" give a still more pronounced and pleasing literary cast to two of the characteristic forms of life in our colonial history, the Puritan and the Dutch Patroon. If the children have reached this point, where they can read and enjoy the "Sketch-Book," it will be worth much as a description of life along the Hudson, and will develop taste and appreciation for literary excellence. Even the fanciful and ridiculous elements conduce to mental health and soundness, by showing up in pleasing satire the weaknesses and foibles of well-meaning people.

"Snow-Bound," "Songs of Labor," and "Among the Hills," while not historical in the usual sense, are still plainly American, and may well be associated with other poetic delineations of American life. "Snow-Bound" is a picture of New England life, with its pleasing and deep-rooted memories. Its family spirit and idealization of common objects and joys make it a classic which reaches the hearts of boys and girls. "Among the Hills" is also a picture of home life in New England mountains, a contrast of the mean and low in home environment to the beauty of thrift and taste and unselfish home joys. The "Songs of Labor" are descriptive of the toils and spirit of our varied employments in New England and of that larger New England which the migrating Yankees have established between the oceans.

"Evangeline" is another literary pearl that enshrines in sad and mournful measures a story of colonial days, and teaches several great lessons, as of the harshness and injustice of war, of fair-mindedness and sympathy for those of alien speech and country, of patience and gentleness and loyalty to high ideals in a character familiar and sacred to all.

7. The Poetry of Nature in the Masterpieces of Literature.

Both in poetic and in prose form there is great variety and depth of nature worship in good literature. There are few, if any, of the great poets who have not been enthusiastic and sympathetic observers of nature,--nature lovers, we may call them. We can hardly mention the names of Emerson, Bryant, and Wordsworth, without thinking of their loving companionship with nature, their flight to the woods and fields. But the same is true of Lowell, Whittier, Hawthorne, Whitman, and all the rest. When we add to these, those companions of nature, such as Thoreau, Leander Keyser, Olive Thorn Miller, Burroughs, Warner, and others of like spirit, we may be surprised at the number of our leading writers who have found their chief delight in dwelling close to the heart of nature.

An examination of the books recommended for children's study and delight will reveal a large number of the most graceful, inspiriting products of human thought, which are nature poems, nature hymns, odes to skylark, the dandelion, the mountain daisy, communings with the myriad moods and forms of the natural world. Such books as "Nature Pictures by American Poets," "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics," "Poetry of the Seasons," the "Open Sesame" books, and others, show an infinite variety of poetic inspiration from nature. Adding to these Burroughs's "Birds and Bees," "Wake Robin," "Squirrels and other Fur-bearers"; Thoreau's "Succession of Forest Trees"; Higginson's "Outdoor Papers"; Keyser's "News from the Birds," "In Bird Land," and "Birddom"; Torrey's "Footpath Way," and "Birds in the Bush"; Long's "Wilderness Ways," and "Ways of Wood Folk"; the "Plant World" of Vincent, the "Natural History" of Selborne, and others of like quality,--and we have an abundance of the most friendly and enticing invitations to nature study. These materials are suited, by proper arrangement, to all the grades from the fourth up. Under good teachers such books can do no other than awaken and encourage the happiest kind of observation and sympathy for nature. It is the kind of appreciation of birds and trees, insects and clouds, which at once trains to close and discriminating perception, and to the cultivation of æsthetic sense in color, form, and sound.

The love of nature cannot be better instilled than by following these poets.

While the study of literature as it images nature cannot take the place of pure science, it is the most powerful ally that the scientist can call in. The poets can do as much to idealize science study, to wake the dull eye, and quicken the languid interest in nature, as scientists themselves. Away, then, with this presumed antagonism between literature and science! Neither is complete without the other. Neither can stand on its own feet. But together, in mutual support, they cannot be tripped up. The facts, the laws, the utilities, adaptations, and wonders in nature are not so marvellous but the poet's eye will pierce beneath and above them, will give them a deeper interpretation, and clothe them in a garment of beauty and praise. There is nothing beautiful or grand or praiseworthy that the poet's eye will not detect it, and the poet's art reveal it in living and lasting forms. Let the scientist delve and the poet sing. The messages between them should be only those of cheer.

It is in this myriad-voiced world of fields and brooks, of mountain, lake, and river, of storm and cloud and of the changing seasons, that poets find the images, suggestions, and analogies which interpret and illustrate the spiritual life of man. The more rigid study of science in laboratory and class-room is necessary to the student, but it would be a narrow and pedantic teacher who would not welcome the poetic temper and enthusiasm in nature study.

The teachers of reading have, therefore, the best of all opportunities for cultivating this many-sided sympathy for and insight into nature, and at the same time to train the children to correlate these nature poems with their science studies. Observers like Thoreau and Burroughs give us the greatest inducement for getting out into the woods. They open our eyes to the beauties and our hearts to the truth of nature's teachings. These are the gardens of delight where science and poetry walk hand in hand and speak face to face. It would not be difficult to show that many of the greatest scientists were poets, and that some of the chiefest poets have been foremost in scientific study.

8. The Sentiment of Patriotism in Literature.

The powerful national spirit finds expression in many forms of literature, in hymns, in war song, in oration, in essay, in pioneer narrative, in stories of battle, in novel, in flag song, in ballad, and in biography.

We have already noted the great significance of American history stories in fourth and fifth grades. It is from the early pioneer epoch and the colonial history that we derive much of our best educative history. The heroism of these old days has been commemorated in story and poem by our best writers.

As we approach the Revolutionary crisis a new body of choice literary products, aglow with the fire of patriotism and independence, is found stored up for the joy and stimulus of our growing young Americans: "Paul Revere's Ride," "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill," Washington's letters, "A Ballad of the Boston Tea Party," "Ode for Washington's Birthday," "Lexington" (Holmes), "The Song of Marion's Men," "The Green Mountain Boys," Webster's speeches at Bunker Hill and on Adams and Jefferson, "Old Ticonderoga" (Hawthorne), Burke's speech on the American War, Washington's "Farewell to the Army," The Declaration of Independence, "Under the Old Elm," and descriptions of some of the great scenes of the war by our best historians.

It is to be desired that children in the seventh grade may have opportunity in regular history lessons to study in detail a few of the central topics of the Revolutionary epoch. This will put them in touch with the spirit and surroundings of the Americans.

In the reading lessons of the same grade we may well afford to discover and feel what our best patriots and men of letters have said and felt in view of the struggle for freedom. The noblest expressions of sentiment upon great men and their achievements are contagious with the young. Patriotism can find no better soil in which to strike its deepest roots than the noble outbursts of our orators and poets and patriotic statesmen. The cumulative effect of these varied but kindred materials is greater than when scattered and disconnected. They mutually support each other, and when they are brought into close dependence upon parallel historical studies, we may well say that the children are drinking from the deep and pure sources of true Americanism.

Parallel to whatever history we attempt to teach in the eighth grade should run a selection of the best literary products that our American authors can furnish, and here again we are rich in resources. The thought and life of our people find their high-water mark in the poet's clarion note and the statesman's impassioned appeal. No others have perceived the destiny of our young republic as our cherished poets, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, and Emerson. They have stood upon the mountain tops, looking far and wide through the clear atmosphere, while the great army of the people has been tenting in the valleys below. These wakeful priests and prophets have caught the bright tints of the morning while the people were still asleep, and have witnessed the suffused glory of the sunset clouds when the weary masses below had already forgotten the day's toil. One thing at least, and that the greatest, can be done for our children before they finish the common school course. They may rise into this pure atmosphere of poet, patriot, sage, and prophet. They may hear these deathless strains and feel the thrill of these clarion notes. Let their ears be once attuned to the strength and harmony of this music, and it will not cease to echo in their deeper life. The future patriots will be at hand, and the coming years will see them rising to the great duties that inevitably await them. We have a body of noble, patriotic material which is capable of producing this effect if handled by skilful teachers: the Ordinance of 1787, _The Federalist_, Numbers 1 and 2, Washington's "Inaugurals" and the "Farewell Address," Everett's "Oration on Washington," "O Mother of Mighty Race" (Bryant); "Our Country's Call" (Bryant); "Abraham Lincoln" (Bryant); Lincoln's "Inaugurals" and "Gettysburg Speech," "Army Hymn" and "The Flower of Liberty" (Holmes), Webster's "Second Speech on Foot's Resolution," The Emancipation Proclamation, "The Fortune of the Republic" (Emerson), etc., "Antiquity of Freedom" (Bryant); "Centennial Hymn" (Whittier); "The Building of the Ship" (Longfellow); "The Poor Voter on Election Day" (Whittier).

Why not gather together these sources of power, of unselfish patriotism, of self-sacrifice, of noble and inspiring impulse? Let this fruit-bringing seed be sown deep in the minds and hearts of the receptive young. What has inspired the best of men to high thinking and living can touch them.

It is not by reading and declaiming a few miscellaneous fragments of patriotic gush, not by waving flags and banners and following processions, that the deeper sentiments of patriotism and humanity are to be touched, but by gathering and concentrating these fuller, richer sources of spiritual power and conscious national destiny. The schoolroom is by far the best place to consolidate these purifying and conserving sentiments. By gathering into a rising series and focussing in the higher grades the various forms, in prose and verse, in which the genius of our country has found its strongest expression; by associating these ringing sentiments with the epochs and crises of our history, with the valorous deeds of patriots upon the field and of statesmen in the senate, with the life and longings of home-nurtured poets and sages,--we shall plant seed whose fruitage will not disappoint the lovers of the fatherland.

Mr. Horace E. Scudder, in his two essays on "Literature" and "American Classics in the Common School," has portrayed with convincing clearness the spiritual power and high-toned Americanism which breathe from those literary monuments which have been quarried from our own hillsides and chiselled by American hands. We recommend to every teacher the reading in full of these essays, from which we quote at much length:--

"Fifty years ago there were living in America six men of mark, of whom the youngest was then nineteen years of age, the oldest forty-four. Three of the six are in their graves and three still breathe the kindly air. [Since this was written, in 1888, the last of the six has passed away.] One only of the six has held high place in the national councils, and it is not by that distinction that he is known and loved. They have not been in battle; they have had no armies at their command; they have not amassed great fortunes, nor have great industries waited on their movements. Those pageants of circumstances which kindle the imagination have been remote from their names. They were born on American soil; they have breathed American air; they were nurtured on American ideas. They are Americans of Americans. They are as truly the issue of our national life as are the common schools in which we glory. During the fifty years in which our common school system has been growing up to maturity these six have lived and sung; and I dare say that the lives and songs of Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell have an imperishable value, regarded as exponents of national life, not for a moment to be outweighed in the balance by the most elaborate system of common schools which the wit of man may devise. The nation may command armies and schools to rise from the soil, but it cannot call into life a poet. Yet when the poet comes and we hear his voice in the upper air, then we know the nation he owns is worthy of the name. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so, pure poetry springs from no rank soil of national life.

"I am not arguing for the critical study of our great authors, in the higher grades of our schools. They are not the best subjects for critical scholarship; criticism demands greater remoteness, greater foreignness of nature. Moreover, critical study is not the surest method of securing the full measure of spiritual light, though it yields abundant gain in the refinement of the intellectual nature and in the quickening of the perceptive faculties. I am arguing for the free, generous use of these authors in the principal years of school life. It is then that their power is most profoundly needed, and will be most strongly felt. We need to put our children in their impressionable years into instant and close connection with the highest manifestation of our national life. Away with the bottle and the tube! Give them a lusty draft at the mother's full breast!

"Nor do I fear that such a course will breed a narrow and parochial Americanism. On the contrary, it would destroy a vulgar pride in country, help the young to see humanity from the heights on which the masters of song have dwelt, and open the mind to the more hospitable entertainment of the best literature of every clime and age. I am convinced that there is no surer way to introduce the best English literature into our schools than to give the place of honor to American literature. In the order of nature a youth must be a citizen of his own country before he can become naturalized in the world. We recognize this in our geography and history; we may wisely recognize it also in our reading.

"The place, then, of literature in our common school education is in spiritualizing life, letting light into the mind, inspiring and feeding the higher forces of human nature.

"It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great traditions of the past of the country, to feed anew the undying flame of patriotism. There is the element of destiny. No nation lives upon its past; it is already dead when it says, 'Let us eat and drink to-day; for to-morrow we die.' But what that destiny is to be may be read in the ideals which the young are forming; and those ideals, again, it is the business of the old to guide. They cannot form them; the young must form them for themselves; but whether these ideals shall be large or petty, honorable or mean, will depend upon the sustenance on which they are fed.

"Now in a democracy, more signally than under any other form of national organization, it is vitally necessary that there should be an unceasing, unimpeded circulation of the spiritual life of the people. The sacrifice of the men and women who have made and preserved America, from the days of Virginia and New England to this hour, has been ascending from the earth in a never-ending cloud; they have fallen again in strains of music, in sculpture, in painting, in memorial hall, in tale, in oration, in poem, in consecration of life; and the spirit which ascended is the same as that which descended. In literature above all is this spirit enshrined. You have but to throw open the shrine, and the spirit comes with its outspread blessings upon millions of waiting souls. Entering them, it reissues in countless shapes, and thus is the life of the nation in its highest form kept ever in motion, and without motion is no life.

"The deposit of nationality is in laws, institutions, art, character, and religion; but laws, institutions, character, and religion are expressed through art and mainly through the art of letters. It is literature, therefore, that holds in precipitation the genius of the country; and the higher the form of literature, the more consummate the expression of that spirit which does not so much seek a materialization as it shapes itself inevitably in fitting form. Long may we read and ponder the life of Washington, yet at last fall back content upon those graphic lines of Lowell in 'Under the Old Elm,' which cause the figure of the great American to outline itself upon the imagination with large and strong portraiture. The spirit of the orations of Webster and Benton, the whole history of the young giant poised in conscious strength before his triumphant struggle, one may catch in a breath in those glowing lines which end 'The Building of the Ship.' The deep passion of the war for the Union may be overlooked in some formal study of battles and campaigns, but rises pure, strong, and flaming in the immortal 'Gettysburg Speech.'

"Precisely thus the sentiment of patriotism must be kept fresh and living in the hearts of the young through quick and immediate contact with the sources of that sentiment; and the most helpful means are those spiritual deposits of patriotism which we find in noble poetry and lofty prose, as communicated by men who have lived patriotic lives and been fed with coals from the altar.

"It is from the men and women bred on American soil that the fittest words come for the spiritual enrichment of American youth. I believe heartily in the advantage of enlarging one's horizon by taking in other climes and other ages, but first let us make sure of that great expansive power which lies close at hand. I am sure there never was a time or country where national education, under the guidance of national art and thought, was so possible as in America to-day.

"The body of wholesome, strong American literature is large enough to make it possible to keep boys and girls upon it from the time when they begin to recognize the element of authorship until they leave the school, and it is varied and flexible enough to give employment to the mind in all its stages of development. Moreover, this literature is interesting, and is allied with interesting concerns; half the hard places are overcome by the willing mind, and the boy who stumbles over some jejune lesson in his reading-book will run over a bit of genuine prose from Irving which the schoolbook maker, with his calipers, pronounces too hard.

"We have gone quite far enough in the mechanical development of the common school system. What we most need is the breath of life, and reading offers the noblest means for receiving and imparting this breath of life. The spiritual element in education in our common schools will be found to lie in reserve in literature, and, as I believe, most effectively in American literature.

"Think for a moment of that great, silent, resistless power for good which might at this moment be lifting the youth of the country, were the hours for reading in school expended upon the undying, life-giving books! Think of the substantial growth of a generous Americanism, were the boys and girls to be fed from the fresh springs of American literature! It would be no narrow provincialism into which they would emerge. The windows in Longfellow's mind looked to the east, and the children who have entered into possession of his wealth travel far. Bryant's flight carries one through upper air, over broad champaigns. The lover of Emerson has learned to get a remote vision. The companion of Thoreau finds Concord become suddenly the centre of a very wide horizon. Irving has annexed Spain to America. Hawthorne has nationalized the gods of Greece and given an atmosphere to New England. Whittier has translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the American dialect. Lowell gives the American boy an academy without cutting down a stick of timber in the grove, or disturbing the birds. Holmes supplies that hickory which makes one careless of the crackling of thorns. Franklin makes the America of a past generation a part of the great world before treaties had bound the floating states into formal connection with venerable nations. What is all this but saying that the rich inheritance we have is no local ten-acre lot, but a part of the undivided estate of humanity. Universality, Cosmopolitanism,--these are fine words, but no man ever secured the freedom of the Universe who did not first pay taxes and vote in his own village."--"Literature in School" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.).

9. The series of American classics is nowise confined to the ideas of local or national patriotism, but above and beyond that deep and powerful sentiment which magnifies the opportunity and manifest destiny of our nation, it grasps at the ideal form and content of those Christian virtues which now and evermore carry healing and comfort to the toiling millions. Our poets, as they have pondered on the past and looked into the future, were not able to be content with less than the best. As the vision of the coming years unrolled itself before them they looked upon it with joy mingled with solicitude. In the mighty conflicts now upon us only those of generous and saintly purpose and of pure hearts can prevail.

"Brief is the time, I know, The warfare scarce begun; Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won. Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee, The victors' names are yet too few to fill Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory That ministered to thee is open still."--BRYANT.

To reveal this Christian armory, the defences of the soul against the assaults of evil, has been the highest inspiration of our poets. What depth and beauty and impersonation of Christian virtues do we find in "Snow-Bound," "Among the Hills," "Evangeline," "The Conqueror's Grave," "To a Waterfowl," "The Groves were God's First Temples," "The Living Temple," "The Sun Day Hymn," "The Chambered Nautilus," "Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Great Stone Face."

The Bible is not generally admissible as a schoolbook, but the spirit of Christianity, clad in the forms of strength and grace, is immanent in the works of our poets. So universal, so human, so fit to the needs and destinies of men, are the truths of the great evangel, that the prophets and seers of our race drift evermore into the sheltering haven they supply. To drink in these potent truths through poetry and song, to see them enshrined in the imagery and fervor of the sacred masterpieces of our literature, is more than culture, more than morality; it is the portal and sanctuary of religious thought, and children may enter it.

10. The higher products of literature contain an energy that quickens spiritual life in morals, in art, and in religion. To many people, whose lives are submerged in commercial pursuits or in the great struggle to develop and utilize the material resources of the world, these spiritual forces seem vague and shadowy, if not mythical. But there are plenty of heroic souls in the realm of letters, such as Emerson, Scudder, Ruskin, Arnold, and Carlyle, who are not disposed to let men settle down in lazy satisfaction with material good, nor to be blinded even by the splendor of modern achievements in engineering, in medicine, and in the application of electricity. We must at least reach a point of view high enough to perceive the relations of these natural riches to the higher nature and destiny of man.

Scudder says, "It is to literature that we must look for the substantial protection of the growing mind against an ignoble, material conception of life, and for the inspiring power which shall lift the nature into its rightful fellowship with whatsoever is noble, true, lovely, and of good report."

Shelley, in like spirit, says: "The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it."

Matthew Arnold, in "Sweetness and Light," while discussing the function of that truer culture and "perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something," remarks:--

"And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But above all in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform because here that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed, nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."

11. Judged by these higher standards our writers and literary leaders were not simply Americans. They were also Europeans. The Puritan brought his religion with him, the Cavalier acquired his gentlemanly instincts in the old home, not in the untrodden forests of the New World. Much of what we call American is the wine of the Old World poured into the bearskins and buckskins of the West, with a flavor of the freedom of our Western wilds. Though born and bred on American soil and to the last exemplars of the American spirit, our literary leaders have derived their ideas and inspiration from the literature, tradition, and history of the Old World. It will be no small part of our purpose, therefore, to open up to the children of our common schools the best entrance to the history and literature of Europe. Our own writers and poets have done this for us in a variety of instances: Hawthorne's rendering of the Greek myths, Bryant's translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," a good half of Irving's "Sketch-Book," Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal," "Aladdin," and "Prometheus," Irving's "Alhambra," Longfellow's "Golden Legend," "Sandalphon," Taylor's "Boys of Other Countries." Nearly the whole of our literature, even when dealing ostensibly with American topics, is suffused with the spirit and imagery of the Old World traditions. There is also a large collection of prose versions of European traditions, which, while not classic, are still lively renderings of old stories and well suited to the collateral reading of children. Such are "Gods and Heroes," "Tales from English History," "Tales from Spenser," "Heroes of Asgard," "Story of the Iliad and Odyssey."

The transition from our own poets who have handled European themes to English writers who have done the same, is easy and natural; Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," "The Stories of Waverley," the "Christmas Carol," Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" and "Water Babies," Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," "Lady of the Lake," "Marmion," "Roger de Coverley Papers," "Merchant of Venice," "Arabian Nights," "Peasant and Prince," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," and others have become by inheritance and birthright as much a part of the American child's culture as the more distinctive products of our own writers. No line can be drawn between those writings which are American and those which sprung from the soil of England and Europe. So intimate and vital is the connection between our present and our past, between our children and their cousins across the water.

These American and European literary products lie side by side in the school course, though the predominating spirit through the middle and higher grades up to the eighth should be American. We have noticed that in the earlier grades most of our classic reading matter comes from Europe, the nursery rhymes, the folk-lore, fables, and myths, because the childhood of our culture periods was in Europe. But into the fourth grade, and from there on, beginning with the pioneers on sea and land, our American history and literature enters as a powerful agent of culture. It brings us into quick and vital contact, not simply with the outward facts, but with the inmost spirit, of our national life and struggle toward development. This gives the American impulse free and full expansion, and fortunate are we, beyond expression, that pure and lofty poets stand at the threshold to usher the children into this realm, founded deep in the realism of our past history and rising grandly into the idealism of our desires and hopes. As we advance into the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades the literature of Europe begins again to increase in quantity and influence, and to share equally with American authors the attention of the children.

The Americanism of our poets and prose writers, as previously shown, has also another side to it, which is one sign of the breadth and many-sidedness of literature as a study for the young. North America is a land rich in variety of natural scenery and resource. Nature has decked the New World with a lavish hand, forest and mountain, lake and river, prairie and desert, the summer land of flowers and the home of New England winters. The masterpieces of our poets are full of the scenery, vegetation, sunsets, mountains, and prairies of the Western empire. The flowers, the birds, the wild beasts, the pathless forests, the limitless stretches of plain, have mirrored themselves in the songs of our poets, and have rendered them dearer to us because seen and realized in this idealism. Unconsciously perhaps the feeling of patriotism is largely based upon this knowledge of the rich and varied beauty and bounty of our native land.

"I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills, My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above."

As along the shores of our Northern lakes the clear and quiet waters reflect the green banks, the rolling, forest-crowned hills, the rocky bluffs, the floating clouds, and overarching blue, so in the homespun, classic verse and prose of our own writers are imaged the myriad charms of our native land. Bryant especially is the poet of forest and glade, "The Forest Hymn," "The Death of the Flowers," "The Return of the Birds," "A Summer Ramble," "The Fringed Gentian," "The Hunter of the Prairies," "The White-footed Deer," "To a Waterfowl," "Thanatopsis," and many others. Longfellow's "Hiawatha," "Evangeline"; Whittier's "Barefoot Boy," "Songs of Labor," "Among the Hills," and "Snow-Bound"; Hawthorne's "Tales of the White Hills"; Holmes's "Spring"; Lowell's "Indian Summer Reverie," "The Oak," and many more.

The literature selected for these grades has a wide scope. It is instinct with the best Americanism. It draws from Europe at every breath, while enjoying the freedom of the West. Social, political, and home life and virtue are portrayed in great variety of dress. Nature also and natural science reveal the myriad forms of beauty and utility.