As soon as children have learned to read in primary grades and have acquired a strong interest and preference for suitable books, the later reading in schools, from the fourth grade on, is designed to cultivate and develop this lively interest in the best standard works in literature still further. Instead of the series of regular readers, many of the schools are in the habit of requiring the reading of good English classics in the intermediate and grammar grades. Such series of unabbreviated English classics are now published for school use by most of the large publishing companies, including such books as Longfellow's Evangeline and Courtship of Miles Standish, Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow, Whittier's Snowbound, Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, Scott's Marmion and Lady of the Lake, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Julius Cæsar, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Webster's Speech at Bunker Hill, Motley's Essay on Peter the Great, Schurz's Essay on Lincoln and Hawthorne's Tales of the White Hills.
The study of masterpieces as units of thought has introduced into the common school a new and improved method of reading and interpreting literature. Reading in grammar grades is no longer a mere drill in enunciation, pronunciation and rhetorical expression. It has become a fruitful and many-sided thought-study, an awakening of deep and lasting interest in the works of great writers and in the great writers themselves as leaders of thought. The very methods of instruction have changed. The teacher herself needs to have an appreciative and sympathetic acquaintance with classic works and an enthusiasm for the study of them. Boys and girls have their attention directed first of all to the growth of a strong idea in a masterpiece and to the author's style and power in expressing it. The characters depicted by the author are worked out in their proper setting and relation to environment. Great moral principles come to light, and ideals of personal conduct are set up, or contrasts are shown between right and wrong action. In other words, it becomes a deep and interesting study of human life as revealed by great writers. Such an inspiring study may then well lead to natural and expressive reading.
It is not unusual to dramatize some of the suitable works and present them on the school-stage, especially those which already are in the dramatic form, as Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, The Courtship of Miles Standish and others.
Another field to which it is the business of the school and home to introduce children is that which belongs to periodical magazines, newspapers and the current literature of periodicals. Children need, on the part of elders, first of all, a wise choice of the best of these productions and, second, a considerate encouragement to read those which deserve attention.
The home has the best opportunity of directing the tastes of children by reading with them. The school can call attention to the best magazines, furnishing them in the school-library, and in the discussion of current events directing the attention of pupils to those periodicals which give a simple and interesting discussion of political, scientific, social and practical topics. Even the daily newspapers require attention; young people should be shown how to read and judge them, and should then be led to appreciate the better class of dailies.
One of the peculiar characteristics of our civilization is this increasing importance of literature in the education of the young. It has grown to large proportions in the last 30 years. Side by side with good and wholesome literature is a great mass of false and vicious books and periodicals which pander to a depraved taste and to vicious thoughts and impulses. It is the duty of the school and home to forestall these bad influences by the steady forces of education, begun early and kept up continuously through all the years of youth.
Some of the books dealing with this problem are Literature in Schools (Scudder); How to Teach Reading (Clark); Counsel upon the Reading of Books (Van Dyke); The Study and Teaching of English (Chubb); The Story-Teller's Art (Dye); Books and Reading (Lowell); Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral Work with Stories (McMurry); Special Method in the Reading of English Classics (McMurry); The Book-Lover (Baldwin); Place of the Story in Early Education (Wiltse) and The Listening Child (Thacher).
Lithog′raphy, the art of printing from stone. Chalky stones, as limestone, absorb grease and water readily. If a greasy line is drawn on a prepared stone, this line can be removed only by taking away the surface so far as the grease has penetrated. If water is put on this prepared stone after the greased line has been drawn, the water remains on those parts not covered with the grease. If a roller covered with greasy ink is passed over the stone, the ink will cover the greased portions, and the parts wet with water will repel the ink and remain clean. If a piece of paper is now put on the stone, it will receive an impression in ink of the greasy line. These are the elements of lithographic printing.
The art was invented by Senefelder in 1796. In 1800 he patented his invention in Bavaria, most of the German states and Austria. His establishments in London and Paris did not do well for the new art was guarded with such secrecy and jealousy as to retard progress, and many years passed before it was brought to perfection. Various methods are used, as drawing on stone with pen or brush, using liquid ink; drawing on
