^v^ 4,OFCAllF0/?^> -< '^ \V\EUMIVER% i O ^vWSANCElfjv, ^HIBRARYOc^ ^n^HIBR "^/Sa^AINn 3^V \^my\^^ ^^rnww ^V\EUNIVER5-/A .v^OSANCFlfj> ■^smw-m^^ "^aaAiNftjwv' ^•OFCAllFO/iV ^^OFCA! ^>&AaVJi9ll^^'^ ^^A ^^^ILIBRARYOc. ^ 1 t r^ ^ ^ILIBRARYO^ ^^^AbVaail-^^ %Aavaan-^^ ^\\E UNIVERi"//, e ^ o ,^WEUNIVER5'/A ^TilJONVSOl^^ Q LITERATURE IN SCHOOL AN ADDRESS AND TWO ESSAYS HORACE E. SCUDDER 7^^f STATE NORMAL SCiIOOu, liOS AJlCELiilS, CRLi. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street Chicago : 378-3S8 Wabash Avenue (atbc irtiUcrsibc press, "JTambriboE Copyright, 1888, »r HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All ritjhts reserved. The Rivenide Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Ilougliton & Co. CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 5 II. NURSERY CLASSICS IN SCHOOL 34 III. AMERICAN CLASSICS IN SCHOOL 44 ck- it San / 516 STATE HORi'iAl jCuOOi-, IlOS AJ4CEUHS, CAU. 1 f(^f THE PLACE OF LITERATUEE IN COM- MON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 1 When Thor, in the Scandinavian story, was trying conclusions with the giants, he was bidden lift a cat which stood before him. He stooped, grasped the cat, and tried to raise it from the ground. The higher he lifted, the more the cat stretched, still clinging with its claws to the earth. When, with gigantic effort, Thor stood erect, he had not yet disengaged the creature. " Wonder not," said Utgard Loke, " that you are not able to lift the cat. It was Jormundgarda herself, the great serpent that binds the world." The fable comes to my mind as I ponder the subject assigned to me at this meeting, — The Place of Literature in Common School Educa- tion. Literature, Common Schools, Education, — these are familiar words ; yet when we trace their roots in the soil of human thought, we find them penetrating great depths and clutching at the very foundations of human order. We speak of Com- mon Schools, and our minds run on to the prin- ciple of community which underlies our political ideals. We brood over Literature, and are quick- ^ Read before the National Educational Association at San Francisco, July 18, 1888. 6 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. ened by the spirit which aspires from the free thought of humanity. We start with a great comjiany in pursuit of the secret of Education, and find ourselves at last alone with God. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that we should approach our subject by that road which has the guide-posts of history to mark its course. A national association is bound to consider themes in their national aspect, and the historic method, with its constant suggestion of permanence of type and development of form, has a prime advantage when applied to national topics, since the nation at every stage of its progress has consciousness of identity with antecedent life. In establishing a community of experience between our later and our earlier conditions, we are driven to disregard those distinctions, incident to change, which are apt to have importance in our eyes, and to seek for the fundamental unity. The men and women of the Thirteen Colonies, who proved equal to the task of writing out the formularies of an independent nation were trained in schools which look narrow and low-studded beside the elaborately equipped buildings of our later day. They had no clay models of continents, yet somehow they learned the art of moulding the institutions of a free peo- j)le. They were ignorant of the refinements of the phonic method or the syllabic method, yet they wei-e found afterward quite expert in reading be- tween the lines of French diplomacy. Improve- ments in method may not draw us away from a T^E PLACE OF LITERATURE. 7 contemplation of those essentials of education which survive methods. The motive which urged our fathers to the establishment of schools was professedly drawn from religion ; the motive which impels us to-day is professedly drawn from politics. If you could have asked John Cotton why it was well that the children of Massachusetts Bay should be sent to school, his reply would have been, that they might learn to fear God. If you ask yourselves why the Commonwealth provides common schools, the answer is, that the children may become good citi- zens. In the former case the conception of religion was bound up with the conception of a particular ecclesiastical order ; in the latter, the conception of politics is limited by the special form of society in which it has play. The former anticipated the political conception, for the germ of a free state lay imbedded in the combined theocratic and com- mercial company ; the latter has not lost the reli- gious conception, for it guards jealously the vested rights of religious bodies. In both cases the human mind is seen struocolino- toward a larger liberty. The common schools thus epitomize the nation. They reflect the prevailing thought of the people ; they embody its ideal. If we would measure the spiritual force of the national mind at any one time, we must examine the contents of the com- mon schools, for as there comes a moment in the life of every father when he is less eager for him- 8 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. self and more concerned for his child's fortune, so the hope, the forecast, the precipitation of ideals in the whole people is to be looked for in the form which popular education takes. The stock-market is not a more delicate register of the financial pulse than is the common school of the national con- science. Consider along what lines educational thought is running, and you will discern on what great circles the nation is sailing. Observe the criticism of a prevalent system, and you will touch the national life at its most sensitive nerve. The counter-currents as well as the currents of popular will may be estimated by this gauge. It is not without significance that you chose for your leading theme last year Industrial Education, and that this year you have taken up the Place of Literature. The two subjects indicate the two lines along which educational thought is moving, and they correspond to the two dominant fields of national endeavor. Once an aristocracy, freed from the conditions of its origin, but retaining its native properties, ruled in this country. Its au- thority was enforced by religious sanctions and supported by the power of the English state. But it had also within itself and all about it a demo- cratic life which expanded until it burst the bands that constrained it, broke up so much of the old order as could not serve its purpose, shaped to itself a new form marvellously wrought from the old material, and an organization of government stood, compact and ductile, itself to be tried before the bar of humanity. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 9 The revolution which sundered the formal re- lations of the colonies to England was more em- phatically the evolution of a free people from the antecedent condition of a people in tutelage; the aristocratic, paternal idea of government was slowly to give way before the democratic idea of ' a nation living under the reign of law and choos- ing the administrators of its order. The complete transition has not yet been made. There is not yet a political consciousness which fulfils the sketch of national order contained in the written constitu- tions. We are still under the control of ideas which lie imbedded in the literature, the laws, the traditions of the English-speaking race, but we are also more or less aware of the growth of political consciousness toward the larger ideal. The dramatic action of a revolutionary war brings change forcibly to our attention, but we know very well that change is in silence as well as in thunder. The earthquake opens a fissure in a moment, and we fancy that, having done his work, the giant sleeps again for a hundred years ; but our reasonable knowledge shows us that this whole earth of ours palpitates with life, and that life is wakefulness, change, energy. Thus, we can- not extend the horizon of our thought at this time without being aware that this new democratic order in which we are living, and wliose centennial birth- day we have celebrated with gun and flag and speech and show, is passing through changes which, whether normal or cataclysmal, shall one day offer 10 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. to the historian the opportunity of saying : The old order has passed, the new has come. We know that the hands which are nervously pulling at the stones of our political edifice are hands that are knotted with hopeless toil, but we know also that the hands which built and the hands which sustain our political order are brown and strong with purposeful labor. We do not fear the outcome, but we see clearly that the social prob- lems which confront us concern the most elemen- tal conditions of society, and that the relations of labor to well-being are to determine the final issue. Therefore in this hour of its coming struggle the nation looks to its schools, and says : Here shall we make our stand, cast up our entrenchments, and be ready to meet the enemy. The danger which threatens the nation is two- fold in manifestation, but single in spirit. The de- fence which we are setting up in our schools is like- wise twofold, but may be referi-ed to a single pur- pose. The cry of Labor in Poverty is for a share in the good things of life, but we whose ears are at- tuned to finer sounds may detect in the cry a more penetrating note. Legion, cutting himself with stones and rushing famished into the haunts of men, recognized the face of the Son of God ; and Labor in Poverty, desperate in its mood, muttering at established order, still wards off the light which it sees in the face of righteousness and pity. The nation that looks upon this devil-possessed is con- scious that its own highest life is not in bread THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 11 alone, but in every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. The sight of matei'ial prosperity which has so wrought upon and inflamed Labor in Poverty has likewise struck upon the conscience of the nation, and has caused that note of alarm which is heard in private talk, in journals, in books, from the platform, and from the pulpit. For the peril which springs from an anarchic force outside of the true democratic order is accom- panied by the peril which ai'ises from the more in- sidious, disintegrating force of disbelief resident in every part of the body politic. When a man loses belief in any higher good than his own personal comfort, the deterioration of his nature goes on rapidly. When a nation loses faith in its ideals, turns its back on its own history, refuses to believe in its divine origin, its divine order, its divine end, shuts its eyes to the goal of history, sneers at sacri- fice and worships worldly success, then that nation is laying itself open to a more sure loss of liberty than could possibly result from exposure to outside attack. The protest of the spiritual man against the tyr- anny of materialism takes various forms. Now it is a glorification of plain living and high think- ing ; now an appeal to college and university for exact philosophy and an intellectual survey of life ; now a demand for the establishment of schools of art and for funds in the aid of students of art and for the endowment of research ; now a vigor- ous movement on the part of the churches to ex- 12 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. tend their domain, and now a distinct call for a closer union between the elementary schools and the church. The ^'oice raised by the demand of men for something more satisfying than bread is penetrating rather than loud, deep rather than vociferous. It is answered in part by the tribute which material prosperity is paying. In the im- mediate neighborhood men hear the clink of the mason's trowel and the sound of the hammer, but to the ear and the eye of the imagination there are rising all over the land, as if in the building of dreams, multitudes of fair structures sacred to scholarship, to letters, to art, and to religion. Not in the politic votes of legislatures so much as in the free gift of men and women everywhere is the es- tablishment of universities, colleges, schools of art and science, expeditions to Greece and Egypt, trav- elling scholarships, public libraries, churches and church institutions. The uncounted gold that is poured into the treasury of the temple has upon it the image and superscription of Caesar, but is trans- nmted by the alclxnuy of consecration into a more precious metal, stamped with divine emblems. Materialism has many forms of expression ; spirit- ual life is also varied in its manifestation. Never- theless, as the grossest, most exclusive form of ma- terialism is in the slavery of the soul to the senses, and the deliberate shutting out of the spiritual in our life always tends to the enthronement of the lower self, so the finest, most unimpeded expression of the spiritual nature is in conscious communion THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 13 with God ; to this the exercise of our higher facili- ties tends, and we measure the force of spiritual in- fluences by their capacity to give wings to the soul, to set it free from the control of meaner, baser ap- petites, and to give the unseen supremacy over the seen. I repeat that the two leading activities of the na- tional conscience at this hour regard the just rela- tions of labor to wealth and the superiority of the spiritual to the material, and that this double ac- tivity is mirrored in the double pressure upon our schools ; that on one side the axe, the hammer, the saw, the file, the pencil, and the needle are thrust into the child's hand ; on the other, literature in its purest, noblest form seeks an entrance to the soul through the eye and the ear of the child. I repeat also that great as is the apparent distance between our present school condition and that which existed in the early days of the nation, the essential near- ness is quite as marked. In primitive times, when our national life was less complex, there was no necessity for the organization of education of the hand. An enormous pressure of circumstance made the boys farmers, artisans, hunters, seamen ; the girls housewives, in alternation with their experi- ence of books. No nice adjustment of intellectual and manual pursuits was called for ; school waite'd on the farm and the shop, and each made way for the other. This relation is not iinknown to-day, and on the sands of Cape Cod, within sound of the water that has covered the footprints of the Pil- 14 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. grims, the hand drops the slate-pencil and the chalk when the ripe cranberry summons. In like manner the spiritual training of the young was determined by the conditions of society and limited by the horizon which encircled the com- munity. In the conception of that day religion and theology were synonymous terms, and Christianity itself was an ecclesiastical structure. The tremen- dous conflict which the Puritan waged with the powers of darkness was such a hand-to-hand fight that he recognized no friends who did not wear his colors, and saw in art, in literature, and in nature itself only foes in disguise. The one weapon which he used, his sword, his buckler, his shield, his jave- lin, his whole armory for defence and for attack, was the Bible. I count it not the least of the mir- acles wrought by this book that it should have so transformed the nature of the people worshiping it as to have spiritualized and rationalized the con- ception in which it is held. \^ e speak of the steady degradation of idolaters who begin by using an image as the shelter of a god, and end by rever- encing only the stock or stone from which all no- tion of the god has fled. But I do not hesitate to say that the spectacle of modern Anglo-Saxon Prot- estant Christianity deliberately destroying its idol of literal insi)iration in order to apprehend more perfectly tlie divinity enshrined within the sacred edifice is one of the most striking manifestations of the power of spiritual Christianity. While assail- ants have aimed to overthrow the authority of this THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 15 ark of the covenant, the reverent hands of the most fearless, yet most devout, scholars in Christendom have been at work tearing down the defences which men have set up about it, confident that no power on earth can destroy the real sacredness. That is as indestructible as light. The revision of the Bible, by opening the Bible wider, has put an end to bibliolatry. Now the ecclesiastical progenitors of the men in this country who have engaged in this work of revision set an extraordinary value on the Bible, making it in fact the political as well as the re- ligious text-book of the people. They did more. They gave it a supreme and exclusive place in the home and the school. They used it as a read- ing-book because their conception of education was a religious conception, and the Bible was first and always in their minds a religious book. Its au- thority was unimpeachable, and its influence was enormous. Within its lids were shut all those lit- erary forces which made for the spiritual enrich- ment of the boy or girl. Rightly was it named the book of books, for outside of this book there was scarcely any literature of light accessible, while within it the sky overarched the human soul. History, biography, political philosophy, ethics, — all these lay on the pages of the Bible, and the reasoning faculties were strengthened and stimu- lated by means of this book, but the forcible dis- cussions in church and state served the same ^nd, and the world save forth a literature of knowl- 16 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. edge and dialectics which was availed of. What our fathers did not receive from the world to any considerable extent was that literature of the spirit^ which finds a response in the imagination and fancy. There was, indeed, in the educated class a recourse still to the spring of Helicon and the mount of Parnassus, but I a,m keeping in mind those who had not a classical education. The lit- erature of light that had its expression in English letters was frowned upon in the Puritan judgment, but by a great and fortunate provision it was not excluded from the Puritan common education. The Bible contained what was necessary to salva- tion, and so, in a scheme which resolved society into individual persons, the Bible became the pos- session of each person. Most truly was it neces- sary to salvation. It saved men from the starva- tion of their higher natures. It fed the sources of spiritual power. This book brought poetry and the vision into minds which otherwise would have been darkened by knowledge. It spanned the whole arc of hiuiian life with its bow of promise, and the radiant light which streamed from psalm, from ])ro])hecy, from narrative and parable, pene- trated the minds of the young. The sanctity which was thrown around it enhanced the power of its appeal to the spirit, and while its teachers were ' I have changed slightly the terms of the familiar distinction formulated by De Quincey, who divided literature into the litera- ture of knowledge and the literature of power, because I think tlie term spirit more definitive. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 17 using it for its doctrinal efficiency and also as a reading -book in the schools, they were opening vistas into the realm of poetic beauty, all other entrances to which they had carefully closed. ' In process of time, as the religious power which so largely influenced our early educational system in this country relaxed its stringent hold, and gave place to a philosophy which partook of the prevail- ing intellectual temper of the eighteenth century, the Bible became less exclusively the book of the ^ I have been speaking, of course, of a condition of American life, with special reference to New England. I am glad to quote here the forcible words in which the same theme is presented by the late Matthew Arnold in reference to English life. " Only one literature there is, one great literature, for which the people have had a preparation, — the literature of the Bible. However far they may be from having a complete preparation for it, they have some ; and it is the only great literature for which they have any. Their bringing up, what they have heard and talked of ever since they were born, have given them no sort of conversance with the forms, fashions, notions, wordings, allusions, of literature hav- ing its source in Greece and Rome ; but they have given them a good deal of conversance with the forms, fashions, notions, word- ings, allusions, of the Bible. Zion and Babylon are their Athens and Rome, their Ida and OljTnpus are Tabor and Hermon, Sharon is their Tenipe ; these and the like Bible names can reach their imagination, kindle trains of thought and remembrance in them. The elements with which the literature of Greece and Rome con- jures have no power on them ; the elements with which the litera- ture of the Bible conjures have. Therefore I have so often in- sisted in reports to the Education Department, on the need, if from this point of view only, for the Bible in schools for the people. If poetry, philosophy, and eloquence, if what we call in one word letters, are a power, and a beneficent wonder-working power, in education, through the Bible only have the people much chance of getting at poetry, philosophy, and eloquence." — The Great Prophecy of IsraeVs Restoration, p. 10. 18 LITERATURE IN SCliOOL. people and less distinctly the one book of the schools. But the schools themselves suffered foi- a while a neglect in the public estimation. It should be remembered that England gave little help to the colonies or to the young republic in this matter, for popular education in England was to receive its impulse after many days from America itself. In the low ebb of our educational life, when the first great religious force was spent, and the second great political force had not yet awaked, literature was represented in our schools by such a book as Bingham's Cohiinhlun Orator, which contained, as its title-page promised, " a variety of original and selected pieces, together with rules calculated to improve youth and others in the ornamental and useful art of eloquence." It is noticeable that literature and speech-making were nearly identical in the minds of people at that period. The poetry of the book was from Hannah More, Addison, and liowe. There was a farce by Garrick, and a passage from Miss Burney's Camilla arranged as a dialogue. When this indifference to schools began to give way before the growing sense of the importance to the country of a general education, the result was seen in the production of a higher class of school- readers. Those who remember the American First Class Book and others of its kind will recollect how high was the order of literature presented in these books. They held their place for a while, but by degrees a change occurred, and the new order THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 19 is an interesting one to consider, both because it was part of a more extended mental process, and because, as I think, we are now passing out from under its influence. Roughly speaking, our present system of common schools is about fifty years old, and in that time there has been an extraordinary activity in the pi'o- duction of text-books in the great departments of human knowledge. This activity is a natural result of the wide-spread attention to popular education. It is not the competition of publishers alone but the set of public interest which has made our geog- raphies, histories, arithmetics, and spellers so elab- orate, so ingenious, and so attractive in mechanical aspects. Every specialist in education sees defects in the text-books which teach his science. If he makes a text-book himself, it is because he cannot find in any of those in use just the quality which rises before his mind as the ideal excellence, and after he has made his own he longs to bring out a new and revised edition. This authorial energy has kept pace with the growth of the school system. It would be hard to compute the literary force which has found a field for exercise in the con- struction of school text-books in America. It may be said to be the one department of literature where, without international copyright, American authors have had full play, and have been affected scarcely at all by English book-makers. The text- book literature of America is almost as indepen- dent of English literature of the same kind as if the 20 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. writers were debarred by law from the use of Eng- lish material. They were not debarred by law, but they were subject to that higher, unwritten law which makes a great institution like the common schools of an independent nation compel those who serve the institution to consider its peculiar needs, and to be strongly affected by the spirit which re- sides in it. The schools of our country have had such innate force that they have shaped themselves and the apparatus they require after the law of their own being, and not after some foreign model. We go to England and France and Germany and Sweden and Russia, and bring back criticisms on our methods and suggestions ; but after all the Americanism of our schools, whether its force is for good or for evil, is too potent to be greatly modified })y other nationalities. Now while this activity in fitting text-books to the needs of schools has been exercised freely in the direction of the literature of knowledge, what do we see in the field of text-book literature of the spirit? Externally, a like advance in all that attracts the eye. The reading-books are often ex- ceedingly beautiful. The best of paper is used, the type is clear, and there is a profusion of deli- cate wood-cuts. Again, there is evident the same refinement in method which characterizes other text-books, a like regai'd for intellectual gradation, a minute attention to all the apparatus of reading, the details of pronunciation, of definition, of ac- cent. In a word, the reading-books partake of pre- THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 21 cisely the characteristics which are observable in other text-books. They stand, on the same footing with geographies, histories, arithmetics, and spellers. They are grouped in the same system. It is not uncommon to see a series embracing all these elementary studies, and the craze for uniformity is satisfied by finding readers, arithmetics, geogra- phies, and spellers all made by one man, published in external harmony by one house, and applied with nice precision of grading to all the children in a town. But the agreement between the text-book litera- ture of knowledge and the text-book literature of spirit is even closer than through external con- formity. There has been a constant attempt at making the latter do the work of the former. Elaborate systems have been contrived by which the pupil when employed in the exercise of read- ing shall reinforce the departments of knowledge. His reading-book tends to become an encyclopae- dia, and it is hoped that when he has escaped the toils of the biologist, the geographer, the historian, he will find in his reading-book more natural his- tory, more geography, more civil and political his- tory. The idle muses are set at work. Pegasus is harnessed to a tip-cart. This indifference to the higher functions of lit- erature, this disposition to regard the reading-book as mainly a means for promoting an acquaintance with the forms of written speech, — whence is its origin? Wliy is it tliat with the whole realm of 22 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. English literature open to the text -book maker, there should have been until recently almost an entire disregard of it, especially in the construction of those grades of reading-books which are coex- tensive with the school life of the vast majority of American children? I think the answer will be found in the power of this great institution of common schools to compel those who serve it to partake of its spirit, to be strongly affected by the very character of the life which they are seeking to shape. To see the bearings of this, we must take into view the whole mass of literature for the young. The period of fifty years last past has witnessed an increasing volume of this literature, and also the growth of a sentiment in favor of it. The disposition to separate the reading of the young from the reading of the mature is of very modern development, and it has resulted in the creation of a distinct order of. books, magazines, and papers. Not only has there been great industry in author- ship, but great industry also in editorial work. The classics of litei'ature have been drawn upon not so much through selection as through adapta- tion. Great works, whose greatness lay much in their perfection of form, have been diminished and brought low for the use of the young. The ac- cumulation of this great body of reading matter — we can scarcely call it literature — has been largely in consequence of the immense addition to the reading population caused by the extension of THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 23 the common-school system. When the children of a nation are taken at the age of five or six and kept eight or ten years at school, and this schooling becomes the great feature of their life, dominating their activity and determining the character of their thought, it is natural that books and reading should be largely accessory, and that the quality of the audience should strongly affect the kind of speech addressed to it. In a general way this great horde of young readers in America has created a large number of special writers for the young, and both readers and writers have been governed by the American life which they lead. > Now the text-books in reading which have pre- vailed in our schools have come under this influence, — an influence pervasive and unstudied rather than acute and determined. The quantitative and not the qualitative test has been regarded. By no pre- concerted signal, but in obedience to the law of their social and literary life, the makers of reading-books began to disregard English standards and to fill these books with the commonplace of their own writing and that of those about them. They lost their sense of literature as a fine art, and looked upon it only as an exercise in elocution and the vehicle for knowledge, or at the highest for ethics and patriotic sentiment. They lost also their ap- prehension of the power of great literature in its wholes, and made their books collections of frag- ments. There are two facts which signally char- acterize the condition of the popular mind under 24 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. this regime : fir st, that literature is relegated to the higher grades as something to be studied ; and, secondly, that the newspaper is advocated as a reading-book in schools. So remote has literature come to be in the popular conception. This state of things may have been inevitable ; it is none the less deplorable. If it ever was inevitable, it is so no longer. The Americanism which controls our common schools has had during this period of fifty years a devel- opment in a direction of the utmost value to edu- cation. The organization of the common - school system has come to be a great factor in our civili- zation. It yields statistics with extraordinary fa- cility. The value of school property, the number of children in schools, the number of teachers, the sums expended in salaries, the cost of the plant, the running expenses, — all these things can be faintly guessed at by any one who sits down be- fore the reports of the Bureau of Education in Washington. The results seem to be measurable ; such a mighty engine, such an expenditure of fuel, so much power. We can marshal the figures and set them against the figures of the standing armies of Europe. The eye, the ear, are assaulted by this great array of mobilized facts. And yet the lar- gest fact remains, that the system knows no central bureau organizing and directing it, no bead, no compact array of officers ordering and controlling it. It is a living organism, sentient in all its parts, moving under discipline, yet the discipline of law THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 25 beyond the mastery of any man. It is at once an exponent of national life and one of the great forces of America. Look now upon this other page of our national history, which lies open by its side. 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. 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 com- mand ; they have not amassed great fortunes, nor have great industries waited on their movements. Those pageants of circumstance 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 Amer- icans. 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 to maturity, these six have lived and sung ; and I dare to say that the lives and songs of Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell have an imperish- able value regarded as exponents of national life, not for a moment to be outweiglied in the bal- ance by the most elaborate system of common schools which the wit of man may devise. The na- 26 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. tion rnay command armies and schools to rise from its soil, but it cannot call into life a poet. Yet when the poet comes, and we hear his voice in the ni)i)er air, then we know that the nation he owns is worthy of the name. Do men gather grapes of tliorns, or figs of thistles? even so, pure poetry s])rings from no rank soil of national life. From the Americanism, then, that is the mere appropriation of the nearest good, we turn to that Americanism which partakes of the ideal and the spiritual. It is not a remote concern of our com- mon schools that these six poets whom I have named because they are distinctively poets, and those other great ones like Hawthorne, Irving, and Cooper, who associate with them in spiritual power, have been the consummate flower of American life ; for it is through their works that spiritual light most surely and immediately may penetrate our common schools. We cannot turn back the wheels of time and replace thd" Bible as the sole reading- book. The day may come when the reasonable and reverent study of this book shall be an es- sential part of the education of every child in America, and Christianity shall not be robbed of its most precious document and most efficient teacher by irrational methods, false notions of rev- erence, and professional assumptions ; but that day has not yet come, and we may meanwhile take courage and have hope when we consider in how many schools of the land its words still fall daily on the listening ear as the blessing before the THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 27 morning task. We cannot, I say, nor wonld we, replace the Bible as the sole reading-book. The conditions of our life and thought forbid this. The avenues by which spiritual power finds en- trance to the soul are more varied than our fathei's supposed, or than we have yet fully recognized in our systems of education, although we ai'e feeling our way upward. Nature is such an avenue, and we have not yet learned to place our school-houses in gardens, as we one day shall, though there are glimpses of the perception of this truth in many bright school-rooms in the land. Music is such an avenue, so also is art, but neither music nor art, though there are signs of greater native earnest- ness in application to them in America, has any- thing like the possibility of power to affect the spiritual nature of children which our literature possesses. God has set great lamps in the heaven of our national life, and it is for us to let the ra- diance stream into the minds of the children in our schools. I am not arguing for the critical stiidy of our great authors in the higher grades of our schools. They are not the best subjects for critical scholar- ship ; 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 argu- ing for the free, generous use of these authors in 28 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. 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 draught at the mother's full breast ! It may be objected that this is too restricted a view to take of literature in our common schools. Why not, some may say, give them the best we have, irrespective of time? are there not writers to-day, whose Americanism is just as fervid and who stand a little closer to the ear by reason of their youth and promise ? I answer that we can- not afford to dismiss from the account the immense value which our classical writers have by reason of their being classical. The perspective in which we see them adds to their symmetry in our eyes, and there has grown up about them already a circum- stance which invests them with dignity and author- ity. They are in the philosophic sense idols of the imagination, and by virtue of the divinity which thus hedges them, their lightest words have a weight which is incommunicable by those spoken from the lips of men and women not yet elevated above the young by the affection and admiration of generations of readers. To the group which I have named others will be added from time to time, but for educational purposes, the writers whom Amer- ica has accepted as her great first group must long continue to have a power unattainable by others. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 29 I have not cared to divide my argument; to show the power of humane literature in enlarging- and eni-iching the common-school system, and then to demonstrate that American literature is the most fit instrument to this end. I have preferred to pos- tulate what is inescapable, that A merican literature of some sort our schools will have, and I call you away from the cheap, commonplace, fragmentary American literature of our school text-books, which has so long done disservice, to the inspiriting, noble, luminous, and large-hearted American literature which waits admission at the doors of our school- houses. The volume of this literature is not very great, and it is lessened for practical purposes by parts which are inappropriate for school use ; but it would not be difficult to replace the volume of reading matter offered in the reading-books above the grade of the elementary, by an equal volume of American classic literature, and the gain would be enormous. If, according to the common practice in our schools, the child were reading over and over and over again the great literature which he would never forget in place of the little literature which he will never remember, how immeasurable would be the difference in the furnishing of his mind ! Nor do I fear that such a course would breed a narrow and parochial Americanism. On the con- trary, 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 30 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. best literature of every clime and age. I am con- vinced 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, the 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. Yet in the same order there is an incipient, prophetic humanism before there is a conscious nationalism, and this earlier stage of the mind requires food of its own kind. I said just now that we had sufficient classic American literature to answer the demands of the exercises in reading above the elementary period. To meet the needs of the earliest years, after the primer has been fin- ished, we have in our reading-books chiefly tried to produce moral effects. We have been too anxious to teach elementary ethics by means of elementary readers, and if we have given ourselves up to what may be called vmmoral literature, we have been content to reproduce for the child just the limited experience of life which itg senses may have taught it. We have left out of account that very large element of wonder which inheres in the young child's nature, and we have been too neglectful of that pure sentiment to which the child is quick to respond. We are to find the literature for this period in the corresponding period of the world's childhood. The literature of fable, myth, and le- THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 31 gend may be drawn upon. The ancient Avorld, the mediaeval world, and the infrequent children-au- thors o£ the modern world, of whom Andersen is the leader, may all be laid under contribution to satisfy the demands for literature which shall not leave the child just where it was after it has conned it, but shall have given wings to its fancy and imagination, and suffered it to take flight beyond the little con- fines of its sight and hearing. Literature of this sort makes the transition from the primer to na- tional literature. 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. In this view, the reading-book becomes vastly more than a mere drill-book in elocution, and it becomes of the great- est consequence that it shonid B& rigorously shut up to the best, and not made the idle vehicle of the second-best. It must never be forgotten that the days of a child's life are precious ; it has no choice within the walls of the school-room. In its hours for readin*; it nmst take what we give it. Be sure that the standard 5lfeich we set in our school read- ing-books will inevitably affect its choice of reading out of school ; that the conceptions which it forms of literature and the ideal life will be noble or ig- noble, according as we use our oppoi-tunities. It is for us to say whether the American child shall be brought up to have its rightful share in the great inheritance of America. 32 LITERATURE IN SCHOOLS. For, after all, we never have got to the bottom of such a subject as this until we have answered the question, What relation has it to true Ameri- canism? We repeat to ourselves that we have organized and are carrying on our magnificent sys- tem of free public schools, in order that the chil- *dren of this country may grow up loyal Americans. The cry of danger at the withdrawal of great bod- ies of children, to be bred in schools which have no organic connection with the state, springs from the fear that such children will be less American. But what are we doing in our own schools to cidti- vate a large, free American spirit ? And what are the elements of that spirit ? I answer the second question first. There is the element of continuity. In the Roman household there stood the cinerary urns which held the ashes of the ancestors of the family. Do you think the young ever forgot the unbroken line of descent by which they climbed to the heroic founders of the state ? In the Jewish family the child was taught to think and speak of the God of Abra- ham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. In that great succession he heard a voice which told him his nation was not of a day. It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great tradi- tions 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 i)ast ; it is already dead when it says : " Let us eat and drink to-day ; to-morrow we die." THE PLACE OF LITERATURE. 33 But what that destiny is to be may be read in the ideals which the young- ai'e 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 those ideals shall be large or petty, honorable or mean, will depend much 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, un- impeded circulation of the spiritual life of the people. The sacrifices of the men and women who have made and preserved America from the days of Virginia and New England to this hour have been ascending from the earth in a never-ending cloud ; they have fallen again in strains of music, in scidp- ture, in painting, in memorial hall, in tale, in ora- tion, 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 blessing upon mill- ions 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 with- out motion is no life. NURSEEY CLASSICS IN SCHOOL. There is, in many of our cities, a ^anii of charity which touches one by its beauty and by its pathetic suggestion. A Day Nursery provides for those little children who need and want a mother's care. While the mother is absent from home, earning her day's living, her small folk are depos- ited in the friendly house, where, with their neigh- bors in poverty, they have warmth, sunshine, food, and the care which make the nursery in all well- to-do homes the most sheltered spot in creation. Meanwhile, the pity of it is that harsh necessity separates the mother and cliild when each needs the other most, and that the companionship which braids spiritual cords stronger than the natural ligament just severed, is brief, hurried, and inade- quate. A stranger takes the mother's place, and orplianage becomes a half-normal condition. A like misfortune, with somewhat fuller com- pensation, befalls the children not of the poor alone when the toddling age has passed. By means of the kindergarten the jjeriod of school life has been pushed back of its old limits, and the forces of oiu' society conspire in a hundred ways to place children early in school, and to keep them there ; the poor go scarcely sooner than the rich, but they NURSERY CLASS res. 35 leave earlier. The organization of education goes on, and, if one dares to say so, the disorganization of the family goes on also. Every year more is exacted of the school. It must teach the hands as well as the head ; it must teach the domestic arts, the rudiments of trade, the latter half of the ten commandments, the sermon on the mount, but not the life behind it. Character must there be formed as well as mental habits ; and as for religion, there is the Sunday-school. The notion of what consti- tutes education has not so much expanded as the notion of the place of education. Tlie school-house is Ijecoming the American temple ; it borrows from the church and the family, leaving one dry and the other weakened. So far has this gone that the school has even begun to assert its authority over the family, and by so doing has conferred an unexpected blessing. After he has sent the child to school to learn what- ever is needed, the parent discovers the school sending the child home to learn extra lessons. It is a question whether the possible Injury of overwork is not counterbalanced by the necessity laid on the parent of helping the child, learning its lessons with it, and so once more getting en- trance into a domain from which he had shut him- self out. It is not the worst thing that can happen to a fatlier or mother to be forced into intellectual companionship with their child. In this increasing monopoly of the child by the school there is a loss of tradition also. In games, 36 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. to be sure, it still holds. In spite of all the Boijis Own Boohs and American Girls Books, and the like, children still learn from each other, and know marble-time and kite-time without reference to the almanac. But books supersede tradition in litera- ture, and from the brothers Grimm to the present industry of folklore societies the constant cry is to save the stories of the people before they have died out of memory. Thus the only tradition which children have, for the most part, is that which con- cerns the family. They learn from the lips of their parents and grandparents what adventures fell within the narrow range of their personal ex- perience, but for all else they are sent to books. It would be a curious inquiry, how few children to-day know the story of Cinderella as told to them, and how many know it from hearing it read or from reading it themselves. Since, then, it is to books that we must go for the stories which have grown smooth from being rolled down the ages of Indo-European peoples, and since the school so largely controls the child's mental growth, it follows that if these stories are to remain as a substantial possession of childhood of all sorts in America, they must be conserved by school methods. The Bill of Rights for children has never been formally drawn, but one of its articles is unquestionably the right to enjoy these tales. Not all children have an equal aptitude for appropriating them, but the instances known of those who are absolutely indifferent at the proper NURSERY CLASSICS. 37 a^e to the charm of nursery classics are so few that they may be pronounced abnormal, or referred to some extremely perverse conditions of nurture. But the rio-ht is one which children cannot well as- sert for themselves, though there have been many instances whei'e the joy has been snatched covertly and in a spirit of independence. It is the business of their guardians, therefore, to see that children are not deprived of this right ; and, as already in- timated, the present guardians of children in Amer- ica are teachers, superintendents, school-committees, boards of education, publishing-houses, agents, makers of school-books, and occasionally parents. The teachers have the fullest control, and the influ- ence diminislies along the line of the remaining forces. It will be said, and by none more ear- nestly than the teachers themselves, that they are bound and hampered by all the other powei's ; but my observation leads me to think that pretty much all the genuine improvement in educational methods has sprung from the brains and practical work of teachers. A prime reason for introducing these nursery classics into the early years of school life is in the economy of resources. At present the child passes from the primer to what are known as graded read- ers. These readers continue through the school course in most cases, and form the body of litera- ture to which children are introduced in school. In the higher grades of these readers there are often classic poems and passages from the works 38 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. of masters of prose ; the proportion of lasting work to ephemeral is small ; still it exists, and many children have known hits of real literature only from their readers. But in the lower grades, that is in the first, second, third, and even fourth read- ers, there is scarcely a piece of genuine literature ; the proportion of ephemeral to lasting work is enormous. Yet it is in the years when these grades are read that the great majority of children pass their school life. After the fourth or fifth year of school the number of attendants rapidly diminishes. For the most pai't, children close their school life with absolutely no introduction to literature. They have learned to read, but they have had nothing to read. They have not been shown what books they should read. There is a great waste, then, in the present system of reading. Hours, days, and weeks are spent in dreary droning over books which are as much left behind as the boy's jacket or the girls' pinafore, when outgrown. What child ever re- members the matter-of-fact, trivial, and common- place incidents and shadowy personages that oc- cupy the pages of its early school-readers? Yet merely for the purpose of training the child in the art of reading, good literature is as serviceable as lean ; and since good literature sticks in the mem- ory when lean has faded away, the child that has been given something notable to read, when learn- ing the art, has practiced a true economy, for it has stored a force as well as acquired an art. NURSERY CLASSICS. 39 What, then, is at the disposal of the teacher and the child, when the primer and the blackboard have done their work? What constitutes the child's natural introduction into that great world of literature, for the sake of which all these labors in mastering' twenty-six characters and their com- binations have been undertaken ? All great liter- ature represents a continual process of selection ; the sifting goes on unceasingly, and in the higher grades of school work the principle is unhesitat- ingly accepted of placing before the pupil the works which are first in rank in their respective classes. The rank has been determined by the accordance of the best minds in all ages, acting upon their generation. Thus Homer, Herodotus, -(Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Caesar, Cicero, hold imdisputable command, and whatever excursions may be allowed, these are fixed stations. Precisely in the same way there are certain classics for children which have stood the test of generations of use, and are accepted not as candidates for favor, but as established favorites. The testing still goes on, and in the gradual sof- tening of manners certain rude, not to say brutal, features in these classics are either causing the stories containing them to fall into disuse, or are slouched off in modern versions. The wolf in Little Bed Riding Hood has been the mark for the ar- rows of the maiden's brothers, and Jack the Giant' Killer falls behind in nursery popularity. These distinctions are to be noted between 40 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. nursery classics and the major classics, that the former have no inviolable form and no individual authorship. Probably the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey had no fixed form until Homer, or " another man of the same name," determined it ; but the stories of the nursery are still in the tradi- tional fluent period, and probably never will secure a permanent literary shape. Perrault largely deter- mined the specific structure of soriie of them, and the Grimms came as near as any to fixing others ; but later raconteurs have felt under no obligation to preserve the form of words of Perrault and Grimm, or the nameless writers of chap-books, though they have rarely departed widely from the traditional structure of the stories, with the excep- tion of Cruikshank, who had the whim to turn the tales into use as temperance tracts. The absence of personal authorship is a happy argument in favor of using these stories in the early education of children. It is during the very period when the nursery classics fit into its life that the child is oblivioiis to the fact of authorship in any story. To it a story is a story, and it is absolutely incurious as to who wrote the story. Only when its interest has begun to take note of some personal relation of author to work does the child need to pass from the realm of the great unknown stories to that of the known, and the transition is fortu- nately made by a familiarity with Hans x\ndersen, whose stories belong in general kind to those of unknown authorship, while his own personality NURSERY CLASSICS. 41 steals out to attract and even fascinate the young reader. The drawback to the use of tliese nursery clas- sics in the school-room undoubtedly has been in the absence of versions which are intellig-ible to children of the proper age, reading by themselves. The makers of the o^raded readino^-books have ex- pended all their ingenuity in grading the ascent. They have been so concerned about the gradual enlargement of their vocabularies that they have paid slight attention to the ideas which the words were intended to convey. But just this gradation may be secui-ed through the use of these stories, and it only needs that they should be written out in a form as simple, especially as regards the or- der of words, as that which obtains in the reading- books of equivalent grade. At present we are met by this difficulty : that these stories in their cus- tomary form, while not too hard for a child to un- derstand who hears them read, are too hard for the child to read at the age when they are most enjoy- able and fix themselves most securely in the imagi- nation. They ought, we will say, to be read by a child who is in the second and third readers ; by the time the child is in the fourth and fifth readers he is ready for more mature forms of literature. Thus they are liable to be lost out of life alto- gether ; they are too difficult when the child could best read them ; their attractiveness is lost when the child becomes able to read them. It must not be forgotten that the school is to 42 LITERATURE IN SCUOOL. many cliildren a harbor of refuge during their early years. From their teachers they hear com- mands unenforced by blows and unaccompanied by foul words. They get glimpses of a world of order and neatness. For a few hours each day squalor and noise and cruelty are remote and forgotten. To such children the school may also be an admis- sion into a world of beauty, and like Cinderella, in the tale, they may until twelve o'clock strikes, be dancing with the Prince in the palace. But with- out separation of social states, it may be said of all children in the tender age that their lives need to be enriched and enlarged, and that it is the gra- cious office of the imagination to do this. In this plea for the introduction of nursery classics into the school-room, I assume that the finest use to which the jDower of reading can be put is in the enlightenment of the mind, not in its information ; and I hold that this use must be steadily kept in view from the first day of school life to the last. There will be many ways by which reading may serve the end of imparting knowledge, but unless the definite end of ennobling the mind through fa- miliarity with the literature of the spirit is recog- nized in our school curriculum, the finest results of education will be lost. The use of reading is not exhausted when the child has been enabled to read the daily newspaper or the Constitution of the United States. The preparation for citizenship which regards only the education of the understand- ing will be as inadequate as the resulting concep- NURSERY CLASSICS. 43 tion of national life will be. The education of the spirit through religion has been left with the church and what remains of the higher family life ; the education through literature must be taken up by the schools, else a great and irremediable defect will appear in the development of character and spiritual force, and this education must begin at the earliest period with the properest material. The child that has spent the hours devoted to read- ing, in its primary course, over fables, fairy-tales, folk-tales, and the best of such stories as go to make up the Gesta Romanorum and Christian my- thology, has had a foundation laid for steady prog- ress into the higher air of poetry and all imagina- tive, creative, and inspiring literature. AMERICAN CLASSICS IN SCHOOL. A LEXICOGRAPHER once asked me to define for him, historically, the phrase common school, as used in America, and to discriminate it from the similar phrase, j)uhlic school. I had not learning enough to answer the former half of the demand, but I conjectured that the gradual substitution of the latter phrase for the earlier came about from the growth of private schools, especially in the richer communities, thereby requiring a sharper distinction in terms. I suppose that the applica- tion of the word coynmon to schools grew out of the familiar use of the word amongst English-speaking people in connection with other associated interests, as land, law, and worship. The term common school is, at all events, a sound form of words, and one full of significance. It calls us back to the prime consideration. There is now and then rumor of an assault upon the pub- lic treasury for the support of private schools which are under the control of some society of men, re- ligious or otherwise, and the defense against such assault is in the right that only public schools shall be supported out of the public tax. This position is not easily overthrown, yet there is a higher ground for the maintenance of common schools. AMERICAN CLASSICS. 45 A common school stands over against a class school, however the class may be defined, whether in terms of society or religion, and the commonwealth is rightly jealous of this common property in edu- cation. There has always been, therefore, a criticism of the common school, whenever the proposal has been made to introduce studies which look to the advantage of the individual member rather than to that of the whole community ; and the most potent argument against the present movement in favor of industrial studies is the instinctive feeling that the common schools would thereby be diverted into the business of educating mechanics. It is a pity that this feeling could not have been appealed to as well in alarming the public mind over the ten- dency of the common schools to an over-production of clei'ks. A considerable part of the energy ex- pended in our common schools seems to be nar- rowed into this channel. That the safety of the republic depends upon the educated intelligence of the people is one of the truisms of our political ci-eed. There is no more telling antithesis in a speech on public education than that which sets the sums expended for stand- ing armies in Europe against the vast sums ex- pended for common schools in America, though now and then some critic does interpose a paren- thesis containing the figures of our great ])ension account ; and probably nine out of ten educated Americans, if asked what is the chief end of the 46 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. common schools, would answer, To make good American citizens. The recipe for making good American citizens is not always analyzed, and one is bound to admit that in some cases the result is half-baked speci- mens ; but the analyst, when pressed for particu- lars, rarely fails to fall back upon the generalities of mental development, with a saving clause in favor of the study of American history as a specific for accomplishing the end in view, while an in- creasing body of educators insist upon the necessity of incorporating in common-school courses of study an intelligible acquaintance with political forms. Now I should be the last to undervalue sucli studies, and I earnestly hope that the common schools of the country may give distinct and marked attention both to history and to political science, and so adjust the teaching of them as to reach the great mass of children who close their school life at the age of fourteen ; but there is be- hind the facts of history and the methods of poli- tics something more intangible, yet more vital to any large and lasting conception of Americanism, and the resources at Our command for communi- cating the spirit which vitalizes national life are simple, natural, and effective. The deposit of nationality is in laws, institutions, art, character, and religion ; but laws, institutions, character, and religion are expressed througli art, and mainly througli the art of letters. It is litera- ture, therefore, that holds in precipitation the gen- AMERICAN CLASSICS. 47 ius of the country, and the higher the form of liter- ature, the more consummate the expression of that spirit which does not so much seek a materializa- tion as it shapes itself inevitably in fitting form. Long may we read and ponder the life of Wash- ington, yet at last fall back content upon those graphic lines of Lowell in Under the Old Elm^ which cause the figui"e of the great American to outline itself upon the imagination with lai'ge 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. It is this concentration in poetry and the more lofty prose which gives to literary art its precious- ness as a symbol of human endeavor, and renders it the one essential and most serviceable means for keeping alive the smouldering coals of patriotism. It is the torch passed from one hand to another, signaling hope and warning ; and the one place above all others where its light should be kindled is where the young meet together, in those Ameri- can temples which the people have built in every town and village in tj^e country. It may be doubted if any single voice did so much to stir young America into sympathy with the Greeks in 48 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. their rising for independence as Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, which was shouted from every school- house in the land ; and while older men in the North were discussing the bearings of the Seventh of March speech, their boys were declaiming from the school- house rostrum the magnificent burst at the close of Webster's second speech on Foot's resolution, ignorant that already they were hear- ing the trumpet-call which should lead them on to death for that Union which was Webster's high- est inspiration. As men grow older they become interested in questions of government and politics, and are ready to make sacrifices of time and money to secure certain political results, in which their own individual interest is after all very slight and vague. This is practical patriotism, and, despite the pessimistic belief of those who are enlightened only by dramatic situations, it was never more at the command of the country than now. But it is not uncommon to hear from such practical patriots, especially when they remember the fervor of 1861, expressions of skepticism as to the continuous ex- istence of the sentiment of patriotism. Of course so general a doubt may be answered by as general an affirmation, and we are no nearer the exact truth ; but this is certain, that practical patriotism is by no means so dependent upon considerations of expediency and personal advantage, or even duty, as it is upon the undying sentiment of patriotism. As well might we say that practical religion rested only in a sense of duty. Its springs are in love of AMERICAN CLASSICS. 49 God ; let these become dry and choked through the failure to hold conscious communion with Him, and practical religion will be but a barren fig-tree. 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. If all this be true, we are bound to make as de- liberate a provision for keeping this sentiment of patriotism alive as we are to provide against the possibility of an attack upon the nation from for- eign enemies. Indeed, the strongest defense is in the inexpugnable sentiment. If love of country is something more than a creature's instinct for self- preservation, if it be inwoven with love of righteous- ness and the passion for redeemed humanity, then it may be cultivated and strengthened, and ought not to be left to the caprice of fortune. The common-school system is the one vast organ- ization of the country, elastic, adapted in minor details to local needs, but swayed by one general plan ; feeling the force of educated public senti- ment, and manipulated by the free, intelligent as- sociation of teachers and superintendents. This orjranization offers the most admirable means for the cultivation and strengthening of the sentiment of patriotism, and it avails itself of it in many ways. 50 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. The great national holidays are made occasions. Notable anniversaries are improved. It is not too much to say that the young men and women of to^ day between twenty and thirty are far more earnest citizens because of the centennial fever which raged from 1874 to 1877. But aside from and beyond these special means, the most important aid of all is to be found in a steady, unremitting attention to American classics. It may be said, and with a show of truth, that it would be possible to bring into one compact vol- ume the great, direct utterances of American poets, orators, and romancers upon the vital theme of our country, and that such a book as a vade mecum could be mastered in a brief portion of the school curriculum. But one feels instinctively that this end of patriotism is not to be attained by the con- centration of the mind upon it for a given time ; that the sentiment of patriotism is not something to pass a written examination upon, at the end of a course of study. The larger results are attained in this as in other pursuits by broadening, not by nar- rowing, the range. The book of patriotism which might thus be culled is an indiscriminated part of the whole body of American literature, and its power is gi^eater as one comes into acquaintance with the whole, and not with selected parts. It is not the " golden texts," so called, which animate the religious mind ; it is the free and full use of the whole Bible ; and the literature of America, taken in its large and comprehensive sense, is worth AMERICAN CLASSICS. 51 vastly more to American boys and girls than any collection which may be made from it of " memory gems." I have written as if a prime advantage of making much of American classics in school lay in the power which this literature has of inspiring a no- ble love of country. But in the spiritual universe there are no fences, and the fields of patriotism and righteousness lie under the same stars. Righteous- ness transmuted into the terms of patriotism is the appeal from lower, material good to that which is higher and overarching. Now our schools, with their close relation to the business of life, demand a reinforcement on the side of spirituality. They have been more and more secularized, and it will only be as the people become largely at one on re- ligious matters that they can ever recover a dis- tinctly religious character. Meanwhile, literature and music remain as great spiritualizing forces, and happily no theoretic differences serve to exclude them from the common schools. It is to literature that we must look for the substantial protection of the growing mind against an ignoble, material con- ception 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 re- port. Mr. Parsons, in his thoughtful, warning paper on Ilie Decline of Duty ^ strikes the keynote of our present peril when he says, "A materialist civilization can never be a safe one." He does not 1 The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1887. 52 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. point out the preservative forces, nor intimate very distinctly to what we are to look for a corrective of present tendencies ; but in the same number of the journal containing his paper is a glimpse of a boy- hood which leaves strongly impressed on the mind the figure of a " boy i-eading Plato, covered to his chin with a cloak, in a cold upper chamber." It is not so much in the story of that life that we are to seek for influences counteracting material greed as in words which have flowed from the lips of the man, whose boyhood knew privations. How many young minds have leapt at the words, — ' ' So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, Wlien Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can " / How many, also, have felt their pulses thrill with the exultant words of that declaration of indepen- dence, " Good-by, proud world ! I 'm going home " ! But how large an inheritance of spiritual power might such minds acquire, if the golden days of their youth were spent over the prose and poetry which embody a life of high endeavor and secret worship ! 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 AMERICAN CLASSICS. 63 US make sure of that great expansive power which lies close at hand. I am sure there never was a time or country when national education, under the guidance of national art and thought, was so pos- sible as in America to-day. The organization of schools is practically complete ; statutes and public sentiment have carried it so far that an era of criti- cism has set in. Meanwhile, we have now for the first time a perspective of national literature. The rise of new men and new methods was needed to give the requisite fullness to our conception of the art of the older school ; and as we move away from the dividing line of 1861, we are more clearly cognizant of that body of humane letters which was then inherently fixed, but needed the vista of a score of years to become clearly marked to our eyes. We are not so much concerned to discriminate the work of the older Americans as we are ready to accept the men themselves, with their well-recog- nized personality. The process of sifting goes on silently, but however it may come to set the mark of approbation on this or that particular produc- tion, it is not likely that the group of men will be much enlarged or diminished. Any list made now oi what, for lack of a better word, we may call standard American authors, would inevitably con- tain certain names, unless the maker of the list were possessed of some paradoxical humor. The majority vote in the long run determines the sway of literary rulers and governors. Just because 54 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. there are a few authors who have an incontestable position in America, we may and ought to turn to them for the foundation of a love and knowledge of pure literature, and my plea is that, whatever else is done in the way of reading in our common schools, these authors should command the chief and first attention ; that school courses should be arranged so as to give them a definite place, just as our American school geographies give the United States in detail, and follow with rapid study of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and just as United States history has the preference in order over European history and ancient history. The real point of practical reform, however, is not in the preference of American authors to Eng- lish, but in the careful concentration of the minds of boys and girls upon standard American litera- ture, in opposition to a dissipation over a desultory and mechanical acquaintance with scraps from a variety of sources, good, bad, and indifferent. In my paper on Nursery Classics in School, I ar- gued that there is a true economy in substituting the great books of that portion of the world's literature which represents the childhood of the world's mind for the thin, quickly forgotten, feeble imaginations of insignificant bookmakers. Thore is an equally noble economy in engaging the child's mind, when it is passing out of an immature state into one of rational, intelligent appropriation of literature, upon such carefully chosen classic work as shall invigorate and deepen it. There is plenty AMERICAN CLASSICS. 55 of vagrancy in reading ; the public libraries and cheap papers are abundantly able to satisfy the truant ; but it ought to be recognized once for all that the schools are to train the mind into appreci- ation of literature, not to amuse it with idle diver- sion ; to this end, the simplest and most direct method is to place before boys and girls for their regular task in reading, not scraps from this and that author, duly paragraphed and numbered, but a wisely selected series of works by men whom their country honors, and who have made their country worth living in. The continuous reading of a classic is in itself a liberal education ; the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as make up much of our reading-books, is a pitiful waste of growing mental powers. Even were our read- ing-books composed of choice selections from the highest literature, they would still miss the very great advantage which follows upon the steady growth of acquaintance with a sustained piece of literary art. I do not insist, of course, that Evan- geHne should be read at one session of the school, though it would be exceedingly helpful in train- ing the powers of the mind if, after this poem had been read day by day for a few weeks, it were to be taken up first in its separate thirds, and then in an entire reading. What I claim is that the boy or girl who has read Evangeline through steadily has acquired a certain power in appropriating literature which is not to be had by reading a 56 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. collection of minor poems, — the power of long- sustained attention and interest. If we could substitute a full course of reading from the great American authors for a course in any existing graded series of readers, we should gain a further advantage in teaching children literature without frightening them with the vast spectre of literature. Moliere's doctor spoke prose all his life without discovering it, and children taught to read literature may escape the haunting- sense that there is a serious, vague study known as literature, which has hand-books and manuals, and vast dictionaries, and cyclopaedias, and Heaven knows what mountains shutting it out from the view of ordinary mortals. There is a deal of mischief in teaching young people about literature and perhaps giving them occasional specimens, but all the while keeping them at a distance from the real thing. At the same time, with American literature for the great body of reading in our common schools, there would be the further advantage that just when the boy or girl was beginning to appreciate the personal element in books, to associate the author with what the author said, the teacher would be able to satisfy and stimulate an honor- able curiosity. The increasing attention pkid to authors' birthdays illustrates the instinctive de- mand from the schools that the authors thus com- memorated should be part and parcel of the school life. An immense store of fresh and deliehtful AMERICAN CLASSICS. 57 material is at the command of teachers, for use in ilkistrating the works of the greater American authors ; and that part of the school course which is devoted to reading may thus be enriched and vitalized in a hundred ways, to the manifest en- largement of the mind of the pupil. The objection is sometimes made to this general scheme that the slow development of the mind re- quires the books for reading to be graded carefully, and a great deal of very minute attention has been given to securing an easy, natural, and progressive grade. It is, of course, apparent that a boy who has mastered only easy combinations of words can- not at once be set to reading Thoreau's Wild Apples, however keen may be his interest in prac- tical experiments upon the subject of Thoreau's paper. Grading is necessary, and it is entirely possible to apply the principle to American classics for schools. Not literature made to order to suit certain states of the juvenile mind, but those parts of existing literature selected in a wise adjustment of means to end, — that is the sokition of the prob- lem of gradation. If Hawthorne's Wonder- Booh is too hard, there are still simpler examples of Hawthorne's sympathetic prose. 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 school, and it is varied and flexible enough to give employment to the mind in all its stages 68 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. of development. Moreover, this literature is in- teresting, 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 school-book maker with his calipers pronounces too hard. The American classics little by little have been making their way into schools, edging themselves in sometimes under the awkward title of Supplemen- tary Reading, and there can be no doubt that every year will see them intrenched more securely. It is noticeable that the movement in this direction is corrective of a somewhat recent condition, and en- couragement may be drawn from the comparatively short life of the graded reading-books. Men in middle life remember when these books first came into vogue; before that time the reading -books were made up of selections from standard English literature. Many a person has grateful recollection of these earlier books for the stimulus which they gave to a liking for fine literature, and certain pas- sages in Shakespeare probably owe their celebrity less to the stage and less to the popularity of the plays in which they occur than to the fact that they have been read and delivered by millions of school- children. But with the great expansion of the school system, and especially with the rapid growth of cities, the organization of schools became a prime consideration, and with this organization came a rapid development of school-books on the side AMERICAN CLASSICS. 59 which most readily appeals to the systematizing and mechanical mind. Reading-books were finely graded, and to secure this supreme good of grada- tion the individuality of literature was subordinated. That was used wliich was most convenient and lent itself most readily to the all-important end of easy gradation. 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 impart- ing this breath of life. The tendency of our schools is always toward an assimilation of the common life of the country, and there is no danger that they will not be practical enough. Arithmetic passes into the making out of bills and the cal- culation of interest. Writing gravitates toward business forms. Geography points to commercial enterprises. Reading finds its end in a Sunday newspaper. But the common life of the country has also its heroic, its ideal temper, and it is the busi- ness of those who have to do with schools to see to it that this side is not neglected. This requires thought, adaptation of means to ends, organization. To secure a just equilibrium, we need to use the great power of reading, and apply it to what is noble and inspiriting. 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, resist- less power for good which might at this moment be 60 LITERATURE IN SCHOOL. 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 litera- ture ! It would be no narrow provincialism into which they would emerge. The windows in Long- fellow'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 Emer- son has learned to get a remote vision. The com- panion of Thoreau finds Concord become suddenly the centre of a very wide horizon. Irving has an- nexed Spain to America. Hawthorne has national- ized 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 float- ing States into formal connection with venerable nations. What is all this but saying that the rich inheritance which 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. STATE NOkvMAL SCHOOL, ' IiOS A^CEUES, CAU. SECOND AND THIRD READERS. The Book of Fables. CHIEFLY FROM ^SOP. Chosen and phrased by Horace E. Scudder. Uontaiuing in language wliich is simple, clear, and intelligiMe to young children, " The Boy and the Wolf," " The Boys and the Frogs," "The Crow and the Fox," "Belling the Cat," "The Boy who Stole Apples," " The Fox that Lost his Tail," " The Dog and his Image," and fifty-eight other stories. 16mo, 80 pages, 38 illustrations. 40 cents, net. 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