FIRST LINES.AUTHOR.PAGE.
He that cannot see wellBacon[54]
Stone walls do not a prison makeLovelace[55]
When the heart is rightBerkeley[87]
It must be so—Plato, thou reasonest wellAddison[92]
England, with all thy faults, I love thee stillCowper[154]
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fastCowper[158]
Oh, wad some power the giftie gie usBurns[170]
Life! we've been long togetherMrs. Barbauld[178]
Rough wind, that moanest loudShelley[218]
There is a book, who runs may readKeble[233]
There is no great and no smallEmerson[245]
Wellington, Thy great work is but begunRossetti[293]
Sacrifice and self-devotionLord Houghton[320]
Flower in the crannied wallTennyson[366]
It fortifies my soul to knowClough[369]
And yet, dear heart! remembering theeWhittier[372]
There is no land like EnglandTennyson[377]
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven aboveClough[382]
Be of good cheer then, my dear CritoSocrates[388]
What know we greater than the soulTennyson[407]
That is best blood that hath most iron in'tLowell[411]
Such kings of shreds have woo'd and won herAldrich [419]

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

NAME.PAGE.
Addison, Joseph[88], [92]
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey[419], [420]
Arnold, Matthew[401]
Arnold, Thomas[227]
Aytoun, Wm. Edmondstoune[315]
Bacon, Lord (Francis)[53], [54]
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia[178]
Beaconsfield, Lord (Benjamin Disraeli)[321]
Berkeley, Bishop (George)[87]
Bible, The Holy[33], [39]
Boswell, James[133]
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett[270], [271]
Browning, Robert[378]
Bryant, William Cullen[272]
Burke, Edmund[147]
Burns, Robert[170], [171]
Byron, Lord (George Gordon Noel)[211]
Carlyle, Thomas[274]
Chatham, Lord (Wm. Pitt)[116]
Clarendon, Lord[76]
Clough, Arthur Hugh[346], [347], [369], [382]
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor[205], [208]
Cowper, William[154], [155], [158]
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock[416]
Darwin, Charles[342]
De Quincey, Thomas[223]
Dickens, Charles[327]
Dobson, Austin[424], [426]
Dryden, John[81], [82], [83]
Eliot, George (Marian Evans Cross)[356]
Emerson, Ralph Waldo[245], [282]
Froude, James Anthony[389]
Gibbon, Edward[142]
Gladstone, William Ewart[367]
Goldsmith, Oliver[127]
Gosse, Edmund William[437]
Gray, Thomas[111]
Haliburton, Thomas Chandler[239]
Hawthorne, Nathaniel[262]
Heavysege, Charles[349]
Herrick, Robert[55]
Holmes, Oliver Wendell[364]
Hood, Thomas[234], [237]
Houghton, Lord (Richard Monckton Milnes)[320]
Hume, David[102]
Hunt, Leigh[217]
Huxley, Thomas Henry[412]
Jones, Amanda T.[412]
Jowett, Benjamin[384]
Keats, John[222]
Keble, John[233]
Kingsley, Charles[354]
Lever, Charles James[284]
Locker, Frederick[400]
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth[336]
Lovelace, Richard[55], [61]
Lover, Samuel[246]
Lowell, James Russell[397], [411]
Lytton, Lord (Edward Bulwer)[294]
Macaulay, Lord (Thomas Babington)[247]
Mair, Charles[426]
Milton, John[67]
Moore, Thomas[214], [215], [216]
Nairn, Baroness (Carolina Oliphant)[177]
Newman, Cardinal (John Henry)[299]
Poe, Edgar Allan[258]
Pope, Alexander[96]
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth[246]
Reade, John[420], [421]
Roberts, Charles George Douglas[440]
Robinson, A. Mary F.[438], [439]
Rossetti, Christina Georgina[417]
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel[293], [359]
Ruskin, John[390]
Sangster, Charles[408]
Scott, Sir Walter[179]
Shakespeare, William[40]
Shelley, Percy Bysshe[218], [219]
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley[159]
Smith, Goldwin[409]
Southey, Robert[209]
Stanley, Dean (Arthur Penrhyn)[350]
Stedman, Edmund Clarence[418]
Steele, Sir Richard[83]
Swift, Jonathan[93]
Swinburne, Algernon Charles[422]
Taylor, Bishop (Jeremy)[56]
Tennyson, Lord (Alfred)[366], [370], [373], [377], [407]
Thackeray, William Makepeace[306], [308]
Thomson, James[101]
Walton, Izaak[62]
Whittier, John Greenleaf[361], [372]
Wilson, President (Daniel)[383]
Wordsworth, William[202]

INTRODUCTORY.

The ability to read well cannot be attained without much pains and study. For even a moderate proficiency in the art of reading two requirements are essential: (1) A cultivated mind quick to perceive the sequence of thoughts which the words to be read logically express, and equally quick in its power sympathetically to appreciate the sentiment with which the words are informed—the feeling, emotion, passion, which pervades them—but which they suggest rather than actually portray; and (2) a voice so perfected that its utterances fall upon the ear of the listener with pleasing effect, and so flexible that it can be managed skilfully to convey to him the full meaning and force of all the ideas and sentiments formally expressed by the words or latent in them. Of these two requirements the first is undeniably the more important; and that training in the art of reading in which the close, persistent, and liberal study of literature for its own sake has not proceeded pari passu with the requisite exercises for the development of the powers of the voice and with the study of the principles of vocal interpretation, has resulted in a meretricious accomplishment of very illusive value.

Nor will the special study and accurate mastery of a number of individual selections give that readiness of mental apprehension which is indispensable to a good reader. The ability quickly to recognize word-forms and to utter them with ease, to catch the drift of ideas, and to feel ready sympathy with change and flow in sentiment, is not to be had without a long course of wide and varied reading. No one can become a good reader by passing through, no matter how carefully, a set of reading text-books merely. Pupils should be encouraged to read for themselves. They should, of course, be guided in their selection of reading matter, and they should be helped to acquire a taste for that which is purest and most helpful in literature; but unless they form a habit of reading, and of reading thoughtfully and with precision, they can never become good readers.

In oral reading, readiness and accuracy depend largely upon the alertness and flexibility of the vocal organs, and to secure ease and excellence in the working of their delicate mechanism much practice is necessary. The pupil should persistently read aloud. A practice of this sort, watchfully pursued, with a reasonable degree of self-discipline in the correction or avoidance of errors, is helpful not alone in obtaining a mastery of the reading art, and in mental culture,—it is equally beneficial as a physical exercise. It will, however, be much more efficacious of good, both of mind and of body, if pursued in accordance with those principles of voice culture and of vocal interpretation, which experience and special study have established.