Macaulay. Channing, Taine, and Ruskin are favorite with most poets, from Chaucer to Byeach admirable in diverse ways. Examples of ron and Tennyson. Lord Brougham, Macauthe Essay-a form of composition which has lay, and Carlyle have alike admired and eulobeen adopted by many of the finest writers-gized the great Italian. The former advised the may be found in the words of Addison, Steele, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Emerson, Irving, Holmes, and Lowell. You will become acquainted with many other writers in this fascinating department when once you begin to read. Biography should be regarded as a branch of history, and, in many respects, the most instructive part of it. There is not space to give even a tolerable list of the best biographies, and you must consult the library catalogues.

It is a good plan, if you have the time, to have two books on hand at once, so that every day you may read history or popular science, and refresh yourself afterwards with travels, fiction, poetry, or amusing essays. The order of reading is not very important. It is only important to begin, and to pursue what you have chosen until it becomes a pleasure and a daily necessity. Thirty pages a day will in a year amount to twenty ordinary volumes.

I have not mentioned any works for your religious instruction, because I prefer to leave that subject to the care and direction of your parents.

I wish to add that the most pure and idiomatic English ever written is to be found in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, De Foe's Robinson Crusoe, and Franklin's Autobiography.

You will need to have always at hand an unabridged dictionary-Worcester's or Webster's -and a large atlas. If you write or speak you will find Soule and Wheeler's Manual of English Pronunciation and Spelling indispensable; and you can hardly do without Wheeler's Dictionary of Noted Names of Fiction. For practice in elocution you will find the lessons in Professor Munroe's Vocal Culture of great service. For reference, an Encyclopædia is very essential. From Underwood's Handbook of English Literature, American Authors (Lee & Shepard).

AVORITE BOOKS OF FAMOUS MEN.-We are told that Shakespeare's favorite writers were Plutarch and Montaigne. Milton's favorite books were Homer, Ovid, and Euripides. The latter book was also the favorite book of Charles James Fox, who regarded the study of it as especially useful to a public speaker. On the other hand, Pitt took especial delight in Milton, whom Fox did not appreciate, taking pleasure in reciting from “Paradise Lost" the grand speech of Belial before the assembled powers of Pandemonium. Another favorite book of Pitt's was Newton's "Principia." Again, the Earl of Chatham's favorite book was Barrow's Sermons," which he read so often that he was able to repeat them from memory, while Burke's companions were Demosthenes, Milton, Boling broke, and Young's "Night Thoughts." Curran's favorite was Homer, which he read through once a year. Virgil was another of his favorites -his biographer, Phillips, saying that he once saw him reading the Eneid in the cabin of a Holyhead packet, while every one about him was prostrated by sea-sickness.

"

Of the poets, Dante's favorite was Virgil; Corneille's, Lucan; Schiller's was Shakespeare; Gray's was Spenser; while Coleridge admired Collins and Bowles. Dante himself was a

students at Glasgow that, next to Demosthenes,
the study of Dante was the best preparative for
the eloquence of the pulpit or the bar. Robert
Hall sought relief in Dante from the racking
pains of spinal disease, and Sidney Smith took
to the same poet for comfort and solace in his
old age. It was characteristic of Goethe that
his favorite book should have been Spinoza's
"Ethics," in which he said he found peace and
consolation such as he had been able to find in
no other work. Barrow's favorite was St. Chry-
sostom; Bossuet's was Homer; Bunyan's was
the old legend of "Sir Bevis of Southampton,"
which very probably gave him the first idea of
his "Pilgrim's Progress." One of the best
prelates that ever sat on the English bench, Dr.
John Sharp, said: “Shakespeare and the Bible
have made me Archbishop of York." The two
books which most impressed John Wesley when
a young man were The Imitation of Christ
and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying." Yet
Wesley was accustomed to caution his young
friends against overmuch reading.
"Beware
you be not swallowed up in books," he would
say to them; "an ounce of love is worth a
pound of knowledge." Wesley's own life has
been a great favorite with many thoughtful
readers.

Coleridge says, in his preface to Southey's Life of Wesley, "that it was more often in his hands than any other in his ragged-back regiment." Soumet had only a few books in his library, but they were of the best-Homer, Virgil, Dante, Camoens, Tasso, and Milton. De Quincey's favorite few were Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, South, Barrow, and Sir Thomas Browne. He described these writers as a Pleiad, or constellation of seven golden stars, such as, in their class, no literature can match, and from these works he would undertake to build up an entire body of philosophy. Frederick the Great manifested his strong French leanings in his choice of books, his principal favorites being Bayle, Rousseau, Voltaire, Rollin, Fleury, Malebranche, and one English author-Locke. His especial favorite was Bayle's Dictionary, which was the first book that laid hold of his mind; and he thought so highly of it that he himself made an abridgment and translation of it into German, which was published.

It was a saying of Frederick's that books made up no small part of true happiness. In his old age he said: "My last passion will be for literature." It seems odd that Marshal Blucher's favorite book should have been Klopstock's "Messiah," and Napoleon Bonaparte's favorites" Ossian's Poems" and "Sorrows of Werther." But Napoleon's range of reading was very extensive. It included Homer, Virgil, Tasso, novels of all countries, histories of all times, mathematics, legislation, and theology. He detested what he called the bombast and tinsel of Voltaire. The praises of Homer and Ossian he was never wearied of sounding. "Read again," he said to an officer on board the Bellerophon, "read again the poet of Achilles; devour Ossian. Those are the poets who lift up the soul and give to man a colossal greatness." The Duke of Wellington was an extensive reader. His principal favorites were

THE

Clarendon, Bishop Butler, Smith's "Wealth of Theseus down to Cleomenes and Aratus, in Nations." Hume, Archduke Charles, Leslie, chronological sequence, and you will have a and the Bible. He was also particularly inter- much more vital sort of Greek history in your ested in French and English memoirs, more memory than either Thirlwall or Grote can supespecially the French memoirs, pour servir of ply. But of course neither this nor any other all kinds. When at Walmer, Mr. Glegg says, rule can be applied in all cases without excepthe Bible, Prayer Book, Taylor's "Holy Living tion. The exception to systematic reading is and Dying," and Cæsar's "Commentaries" lay made by predilection. If you feel a strong within his reach, and, judging by the marks of natural tendency towards acquainting yourself use on them, they must have been much read with any particular period of history, by all 1 and often consulted.-From Smiles's Character means make that acquaintance; only do it ac(Harper). curately and thoroughly. One link in the chain firmly laid hold of, will by and by, through natural connection, lead to others. As you advance from favorite point to point, you will find the necessity of binding them together by some strict chronological sequence. For general information a sort of random reading may be allowed occasionally; but this sort of thing has to do only with the necessary recreation or the useful furnishing of the mind, and is utterly destitute of training virtue; and such reading, to which there is great temptation in these times, is rather prejudicial than advantageous to the mind. The great scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had not so many books as we have, but what they had they made a grand use of. Reading, in the case of mere miscellaneous readers, is like the racing of some little dog about the moor, snuffing everything and catching nothing; but a reader of the right sort finds his prototype in Jacob, who wrestled with an angel all night, and counted himself the better for the bout, though the sinew of his thigh shrank in consequence. From Blackie's Self-Culture (Scribner).

HE GREAT BOOKS AND THE LITTLE BOOKS. -Fix, therefore, in your eye the great books on which the history of human thought and the changes of human fortunes have turned In politics look to Aristotle; in mathematics to Newton; in philosophy to Leibnitz; in theology to Cudworth; in poetry to Shakespeare; in science to Faraday. Cast a firm glance also on those notable men, who, though not achieving any valuable positive results of speculation, were useful in their day, as protesting against wide spread popular error, and rousing people into trains of more consistent thinking and acting. To this class of men belonged Voltaire amongst the French, and David Hume in our country. But, of course, while you covet earnestly a familiar acquaintance with all such original thinkers and discoverers in the world of thought and action, you will feel only too painfully that you cannot always lay hold of them in the first stage of your studies; you will require steps to mount up to shake hands with these Celestials; and these steps are little books. Do not, therefore, despise little books; they are for you the necessary lines of approach to the great fortress of knowledge, and cannot safely be overleapt. On the contrary, take a little grammar, for instance, when learning a language, rather than a big one; and learn the fundamental things, the anatomy, the bones and solid framework, with strict accuracy, before plunging into the complex tissue of the living physiology. This may appear harsh at first, but will save you trouble afterwards. But, while you learn your little book thoroughly, you must beware of reading it by the method of mere CRAM Some things, no doubt, there are that must be appropriated by the process of cram; but these are not the best things, and they contain no culture. Cram is a mere mechanical operation, of which a reasoning animal should be ashamed. But cramming, however often practised, is seldom necessary; it is resorted to by those specially who cannot, or who will not, learn to think. I advise you, on the contrary, whenever possible, to think before you read, or at least while you are reading. If you can find out for yourself by a little puzzling why the three angles of a triangle not only are, but in the very nature of the thing must be, equal to two right angles, you will have done more good to your reasoning powers than if you had got the demonstrations of the whole twelve books of Euclid by heart according to the method of cram. The next advice I give you with regard to books is that you should read as much as possible systematically and chronologically. Without order things will not hang together in the mind, and the most natural and instructive order is the order of genesis and growth. Read Plutarch's great Lives, for instance, from

PROFESSON

"

ROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING.We cannot but think that our colleges, while they provide the student with libraries, should also provide him with a professor of books and reading. It is not enough to introduce him to these quarries of knowledge; he should also be taught where to sink his shafts and how to work them. Mr. Emerson, speaking of such a professorship in one of his later essays, says: "I think no chair is so much wanted.' Even the ripest scholar is puzzled to decide what books he shall read among the myriads that clamor for his attention. What, then, must be the perplexity of one who has just entered the fields of literature! If in Bacon's time some books were " to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested," how much greater must seem the necessity of discrimination at this day, when the amount of literary pabulum has quadrupled and even quintupled! there not then an absolute necessity that the student who would economize his time and make the best use of his opportunities, should be guided in his reading by a competent adviser? Will it be said that, according to the theory of a collegiate education, the studies of the curriculum will demand all his time; that he will have no spare hours for general culture? We reply that, as a matter of fact, whatever the theory, in no college does the student, as a rule, give his whole time to the regular lessons, however long or difficult. Unless very dull or poorly prepared, the student does find time to read,-often several hours a day,-and he is generally encouraged to do so by the professors. The question, therefore, is not whether

Is

he shall concentrate all his time and attention upon his text-books, but whether he shall read instructive books, for a definite purpose and under competent direction, or shall acquire, without direction, the merest odds and ends of knowledge.

easily acquired may impart a temporary stimulus and a kind of intellectual keenness and cleverness, but it brings no solid advantage. It is, in fact, "the merest epicurism of intelligence-sensuous, but certainly not intellectual." Magnify as we may the necessity of regarding individual peculiarities in education, it is certain that genius, inspiration, or an affinity for any kind of knowledge, does not necessarily exclude self-knowledge, self-criticism, or self-control. As another has said: "If the genius of a man lies in the development of the individual person that he is, his manhood lies in finding out by study what he is, and what he may become, and in wisely using the means that are fitted to form and perfect his individuality.”

There are some persons, no doubt, who are opposed to all guidance of the young in their reading. They would turn the student loose into a vast library and let him browse freely in whatever literary pastures may please him. With Johnson they say, "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both; read anything five hours a day, and you will soon be learned." Counsel, advice in the choice of books, they condemn as interfering with the freedom of individual taste and the spontaneity which is the condition of intellectual progress. "Read," they say to the young man, "what you can read with a keen and lively relish; what charms, thrills, or fascinates you; what stimulates and inspires your mind, or satisfies your intellectual hunger; in brief, sir, study what you most affect.'" No doubt there is a vein of wisdom in this advice. It is quite possible to order one's reading by too strict and formal a rule. A youth will continue to study only that in which he feels a real interest and pleasure, constantly provoking him to activity. It is not the books which others like, or which they deem best fitted for him, that he will read and read with profit, but the books that hit his tastes most exactly and that satisfy his intellectual cravings. No sensible edu- Will it be objected to our plan, that a vast cator will prescribe the same courses of read-majority of American colleges are ill endowed, ing for two persons, or lay down any formal, and cannot afford to have a Professorship of cast-iron rules for the direction of the mental Books and Reading, however desirable? We processes. That which is the most nutritious reply that such a chair, specially endowed, is not aliment of one mind may prove deleterious and indispensable; but that its duties, in the smaller even poisonous to another. colleges, might be discharged by the professor of English Literature, or by an accomplished librarian.

To some extent, too, the choice of books may be left to individual taste and judgment. There will be times when, under the attraction of a particular subject, or the magnetism of a particular author, it may be advisable to break away from the prescribed list, and follow the thoughtful promptings of nature. That must be a sorry tameness of intellect that feels no impulse to get out of the groove of even the most judicious course of reading. Again, there are some minds that have an eclectic quality which inclines them to the reading they require, and in a library they not only instinctively pounce upon the books they need, but draw at once from them the most valuable ideas as the magnet draws the iron filings scattered through a heap of sand. But these are rare cases, and can furnish no rule for general guidance. To assert that a learned and judicious adviser cannot help the ordinary student in the choice of books, is to assert that all teaching is valueless. If inspiration, genius, taste, elective affinities are sufficient in the selection and reading of books, why not also in the choice of college studies? Why adopt a curriculum? The truth is, the literary appetite of the young is often feeble, and oftener capricious or perverted. While their stomachs generally reject unwholesome food, their minds often feed on garbage and even poison. The majority of young persons are fond of laborsaving processes and short cuts to knowledge, and have little taste for books which put much strain upon the mind. The knowledge too

Will it be said that there are manuals or "courses of reading," such as Pycroft's, or President Porter's excellent work, by the aid of which an undergraduate may select his books without the aid of a professor? We answer that such manuals, while they are often serviceable, can never do the work of a living guide and adviser. Books can never teach the use of books. No course of reading, however ideally good, can be exactly adapted to all minds. Every student has his idiosyncrasies, his foibles, his "stond or impediment in the wit," as Bacon terms it, which must be considered in choosing his reading-matter, so that not only his tastes may be in some degree consulted, but "every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.'

But, it may be asked, what are the qualifications, and what will be the duties, of such a literary gustator and guide? We reply that a professor of books and reading should be a man of broad and varied culture, with catholic tastes, a thorough knowledge of bibliography, especially of critical literature, and much knowledge of men; one who can readily detect the peculiarities of his pupils, and who, in directing their reading, will have constant reference to these as well as to the order of nature and intellectual development. While he may prepare, from time to time, courses of reading on special topics, and especially on those related to the college studies, he will be still more useful in advising the student how to read most advantageously; in what ways to improve the memory; how to keep and use commonplace books; when to make abstracts; and in giving many other hints which books on reading never communicate, and which suggest themselves only to one who has learned after many years of experience and by many painful mistakes the secret of successful study. He will see that the young men who look to him as their guide read broadly and liberally, yet care "multum legere potiùs quam multa." He will see that they cultivate 'the pleasuregrounds as well as the corn-fields of the mind;" that they read not only the most famous books, but the best reputed current works on each subject; that they read by subjects, and not by

66

authors; perusing a book not because it is the newest or the oldest, but because it is the very one they need to help them on to the next stage of their inquiries; and that they practise subsoil ploughing by re-reading the masterpieces of genius again and again. Encouraging them to read the books they "do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read," he will teach them to discriminate, nevertheless, between true desire, the monition of nature, and that superficial, false desire after spiceries and confectioneries which, as Carlyle says, is So often mistaken for the real appetite, lying far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food;" and, discouraging short cuts in general, he will yet often save the student days of labor by pointing out some masterly review article in which is condensed into a few pages the quintessence of many volumes.-From Mathews' Hours with Men and Books (Griggs).

THE

priesthood assumed that character of political management and trickery which long since took organic shape in the order of the Jesuits. The Italian universities were visited by immense numbers of students. In Roger Bacon's time-taking the year 1262 as an example— there were in Bologna alone 20,000, nearly every one of whom was engaged in the study of papal jurisprudence.

Coming north of the Alps we find the great school of Paris, which was at first devoted to "general studies," but afterward elevated to a University. It was at the outset under the patronage of the popes, but afterward under the care of the French kings. But the popes still controlled the studies, as, indeed, they controlled every thing else in Europe. So they prohibited the study of jurisprudence in Paris, fearing, no doubt, that at that distance from Rome there might be an admixture of independence or political heresy in the instruction. Theology was the principal study in Paris; the HE UNIVERSITIES OF EUROPE.-Doellinger students remained generally fifteen or sixteen was installed Rector of the University of years, until they were from thirty to forty years Munich in the year 1866. Conformably to cus- of age, before they were thought sufficiently intom, he delivered an oration on the assump-doctrinated to become trusty priests. Nearly tion of the rectorate, taking as his theme: half of Paris was converted to the use of the "Die Universitäten Sonst und Jetzt." He students, who flocked thither in great multigave an outline of the history and present con- tudes from all parts of Europe, except Italy. dition of the European Universities, which I A Venetian embassador, living at the end of here reproduce. Of course it could not be ex- the sixteenth century, states that there were pected that Doellinger should do justice to the then more students in the universities of Paris Protestant element in modern intellectual than in all the Italian universities together. He growth; but, leaving this very natural defect reports the number to have been 30,coo, a out of the question, his survey is remarkable statement which is sustained by an account of for conciseness, learning, and a profound ap- the General Procurator of the same period. preciation of the advanced state of learning in the present century.

The first great school of any note, combining the main features of the modern university, was the medical college at Salerno, which enjoyed a wide reputation in the eleventh century. After the lapse of a century we hear of the flourishing law school at Bologna. In the thirteenth century, the law school at Padua was founded. But these institutions were surpassed in extent of studies and financial support by the university at Naples, founded by the king of Sicily in 1224, for the education of young men. The laws of the country were so stringent that no young men were permitted to attend any seat of learning in other parts of Europe; hence it was natural that this institution should grow up devoid of that freedom and breadth peculiar to the real university in its best sense.

The spirit of usurpation exhibited by the popes, long anterior as well as subsequent to this time, found expression in the studies of the Italian universities. The branches that favored the temporal sovereignty of the papacy and humiliated the princes were taught with great assiduity. There was at that day no scientific tendency whatever in Italy, though that was the very country which contained the great treasures of the classic age. Dante made the complaint that “ every body was studying the decretals of the popes." Roger Bacon says: The jurisprudence of the Italians has, for forty years, been destroying the study of philosophy, natural science, and theology, yea, even the Church and all the kingdoms." ecclesiastical or papal jurisprudence was the sole pursuit of the theological students; and it was far back in these times that the Roman

This

at

It is remarkable that three centuries passed by after the founding of the first of the Italian universities before the thought seems to have occurred to any one in Germany to establish a similar institution. Even England had followed in the wake of Italy, and had endowed Cambridge and Oxford long before. But in Germany there was no school of any prominence, much less one bearing any resemblance to the German university of to-day, until 1348, when the Emperor Charles IV. founded one Prague after the model of the University of Paris. In this he does not seem to have been actuated by any very elevated motive, but from the mere accident that he had himself been a student in Paris, and had been fond of student life. Very soon the University of Prague was visited by many thousands of students, the Germans taking a national pride in it. The University of Vienna followed that of Prague, in 1365.

But two more centuries elapsed before the German university attained that universal and liberal character which it now possesses in a remarkable degree. Doellinger cannot be expected, Catholic as he is, to do justice to the Reformation, and to Protestantism in general, in their elevating influence on higher education at this time. But he does make the confession that in the sixteenth century a new and better era dawned upon the German universities. This was the time,when the Humanists, or Philologians, first brought the classics of Greek and Roman literature home to the German mind, and when scholasticism was in its deathagony.

The German universities increased rapidly, though now and then one was compelled to go down with the downfall of a patron prince, or