body is healthful, by reading. No one can read the speeches of Burke, of Chatham, and of our own Patrick Henry, without being moved. No matter what you are writing upon, or upon what you are to speak, you cannot read a good book without being stimulated. The dream of Clarence, and the speeches of Hamlet, in Shakespeare; the speeches of men in the senate; the addresses of men from the pulpit; and, above all, the overwhelming torrent of clear thought, in burning language, which the masters of ancient times. poured out, will swell the bosom, rouse the soul, and call all your own powers into action. This effect of books will last through life; and he who knows how to read to advantage will ever have something as applicable to his mental powers as electricity is to move the animal system. The man who has sat over the workings of a powerful mind, as exhibited on the written page, without being excited, moved, and made to feel that he can do something, and will do something, has yet to learn one of the highest pleasures of the student's life, and is yet ignorant of what rivers of delight are flowing around him through all the journey of life.

HOW TO READ

HOW

Reading Aloud

By CHARLES F. RICHARDSON

WOW should we read? asks Bishop Alonzo Potter in his still useful hand-book for readers; and then the good bishop proceeds to answer the question in four replies: "First, thoughtfully and critically; secondly, in company with a friend, or your family; thirdly, repeatedly; fourthly, with pen in hand."

Reading aloud, in the company of others--the practice commended by Bishop Potter in the second of these rulesis in every way advantageous. Its least important advantage is nevertheless highly salutary; that it affords valuable means for elocutionary development; and, aside from this, it promotes thought, it stimulates one mind by contact with another; and it almost inevitably calls forth, by discussion, facts and opinions which otherwise would not have been considered.

In one of his jeremiads on the alleged decline and inutility of the public-school system Richard Grant White offered some suggestions on the training of classes in the art of reading aloud which are so sound and sensible that they may well be repeated here for general readers as well as educators. Of all knowledge and mental training," says Mr. White, reading is in our day the principal means, and reading aloud intelligently the unmistakable, if not the only, sign. Yet this, which was so common when the present generation of mature men were boys, is just what our highly

and scientifically educational educators seem either most incapable or most neglectful of teaching. And yet the means by which children were made intelligent and intelligible readers, thirty-five or forty years ago, were not so recondite as to be beyond attainment and use by a teacher of moderate abilities and acquirement, who set himself earnestly to his work. As I remember it, this was the way in which we were taught to read with pleasure to ourselves and with at least satisfaction to our hearers. Boys of not more than seven to nine years old were exercised in defining words from an abridged dictionary. The word was spelled and the definition given from memory, and then the teacher asked questions which tested the pupil's comprehension of the definition that he had given, and the members of the class, never more than a dozen or fourteen in number, were encouraged to give in their own language their notion of the word and to distinguish it from so-called synonyms. As to the amount of knowledge that was thus gained, it was very little-little, at least, in comparison with the value of this exercise as education, that is, of mental training, which was very great. The same class read aloud every day, and the books that they read were of sufficient interest to tempt boys to read them of themselves. When the read

ing began all the class were obliged to follow the reader, each in his own book; for any pupil was liable to be called upon to take up the recitation, even at an ur.finished sentence, and go on with it; and if he hesitated in such a manner as showed that his eye and mind were not with the reader's, the effect upon his mark account was the same as if he himself had failed in reading. If the reading of any sentence did not show a just apprehension of its meaning, the reader was stopped and the sentence was passed through the class for a better expression of its sense. Whether this was obtained from the pupils or not, the teacher then explained the sense or gave some information, the want of which had caused the failure, and by repetition of both readings-the bad and the good-showed by contrast and by comment why the one was bad and why the other good. Words

were explained; if they were compound words they were analyzed; the different shades of meaning which words have in different connections were remarked upon, and the subject of the essay, the narration, or the poem which formed the lesson of the day was explained. The delivery of the voice was attended to; not in any pretentious, artificial, elocutionary way, but for such regard for good and pleasant speech as was dictated by common-sense and good-breeding. The young readers were not allowed to hang their heads either over their bosoms or over their shoulders, but were made to stand up straight, throw back their shoulders, lift their heads well up, so that if their eyes were taken from their books they would look a man straight in the face. Only in this position can the voice be well delivered. The slightest mispronunciation was, of course, observed and corrected, and not only so, but bad enunciation was checked, and all slovenly mumbling was reprehended, and as far as possible reformed. Yet with all this there was constant caution against a prim, pedantic, and even a conscious mode of reading. The end sought was an intelligent, natural, and simple delivery of every sentence. Of course a lesson in reading like this was no trifling matter. It was, indeed, the longest recitation of the session, and the one at which the instructive powers of the teacher were most severely tested. But it was the most valuable, the most important lesson of the day. By it the pupil was taught not only to read well and speak well, but to think. His powers of attention and apprehension were put in exercise, and he was obliged to discriminate shades of meaning before he could express them by inflection of voice. Reading aloud well was then regarded as inferior in importance to no other branch of education; it was practiced until pupils were prepared to enter college, the later reading lessons being taken from Milton or Pope or Burke, or some other writers of the highest class, and being again accompanied by explanation and criticism. In the earlier years of a boy's school-time any other recitation would be omitted by the teacher sooner than that in reading aloud. How it is, or

why it is, that such instruction in reading has fallen into disuse I do not know. Indeed I know that it is disused only by the chorus of complaint that goes up on all sides, both in England and in the United States, that children cannot read aloud, and that they cannot write from dictation. This, of course, could not be if children were taught in the manner which I have endeavored to describe. A school-boy of eight or nine years old, if taught in that way, would know how to read English aloud decently well, if he knew nothing else. And it is really more important that he should know how to do this well, and that he should learn to do it in some such manner as I have described, than that he should begin the study of the arts and sciences."

In this connection there occurs to the mind a single verse of the Bible, which comprises, in twenty-three words, a whole treatise on the art of reading aloud: So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading."

This is not the place for any long discussion of the externals, so to speak, of reading aloud. As we have said, reading in the home circle, cr literary clubs, binds mere elocutionary practice closely with a new apprehension of the sense of what is read, and promotes in a high degree the growth of culture in those who take part in it. Fortunately the habit is being revived, both at home and in associations of readers, and will prove to repay cultivation to an unlimited extent. Reading aloud is slower work than reading to one's self, but the advantages of deliberate thought, and of a fellowship with the minds of others, more than make up this loss.