martyr-burning, imprisonment for not attending the parish church, hanging for sheep-stealing and rabbit shooting were part and par cel of the customs of civil life. All these have changed. We should change this too. The world will be sufficiently wise some day to break the rod of the schoolmaster, and hang an olive branch over each desk at which a teacher sits.

Goldsmith, Chatterton, and Sir Walter Scott were reckoned dunces in their classes; so also was Ebenezer Elliot. Hear the confession of this latter:-" Oh the misery of reading without having learned to spell! The name of the master was Brunskill, a broken-hearted Cumberland man, one of the best of living creatures, —a sort of sad-looking, half-starved angel without wings; and I have stood for hours beside his desk, with the tears running down my face, utterly unable to set down one correct figure. I doubt whether he ever suspected that I had not been taught the preliminary rules. I actually did not know that they were necessary, and looked on a boy who could do a sum in vulgar fractions as a sort of magician. Dreading school, I absented myself from it during the summer months of the second year, playing truant' about Dalton Deign and Silverwood, or Thryburgh Park."-Autobiography, p. 15.

This is the moral responsibility the rod teaches. It distorts all the inclinations of a boy; it applies the argument of pain, not to persuade him to attend, but to drive him away from school; to forget all other duties and responsibilities, that he may escape the degradation and the pain which comes to reputed "duncery."

"Ah! better far than all the Muses' lyres,

All coward arts, is valour's generous heat;

The firm, fixed breast which fit and right requires."

But valour, thoughtfulness, and often, too, truthfulness, depart from the spirit at the brandishing of the rod, and the cowed and craven urchin resigns his noble nature in fear of the "mickle love" wrought by the twigs of the "birchen tree."

It is all very well for masters to asseverate,

"I must be cruel only to be kind."

Children do not understand paradoxes, and cruel kindness does not commend itself to their feelings. A greater amount of intelligence in the teacher, of moral principle in the management of classes, of considerateness for infirmities of mind and morals, would greatly facilitate good education. While we rejoice that the schoolmaster is abroad, we must confess that we sincerely wish he was less seldom found flourishing the rod and handling the cane. HOPESTOCK.

Literature.

IS THE PERUSAL OF WORKS OF FICTION RIGHT OR WRONG?

RIGHT. IV.

"To make us wiser and larger-hearted, to conduct us through a wider range of experience than the actual life of each generally permits, to make us live in the lives of other types of character than our own, or than those of our daily acquaintances, to enable us to pass by sympathy into other minds and other circumstances, and especially to train the moral nature by sympathy with noble characters and noble actions-these are the high aims of fiction in the hands of its masterwielders; these are the aims which have raised novels and dramas to an importance which Nature herself indicates in assigning to their production those powers which the consent of all ages allows to rank supreme among the gifts of the human race." -George Brimley.

WHEN once disputing with a friend on this subject, he thought to settle the matter by quoting from Walker's Dictionary this definition of the word fiction:- "The act of feigning or inventing; the thing feigned or invented; a falsehood, a lie." But how far such an ex parte method of dealing with this subject is from settling it, I hope we shall see presently.

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What are works of fiction? There are, to make a comprehensive yet distinct and clear summary, dramatic, poetic, novelistic, allegoric, parabolic works of fiction; or perhaps we should say that all these classes of works are in the main fictitious. Among them we have the works of Shakspere; Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress;" "The Vision of Mirza ;" the parables of our Lord; and all that countless literature which goes under the name of "novels." But I am aware that this term fiction is generally used solely and exclusively to this last-mentioned class of works; whereas, in fact, it includes them all, all inventive and imaginative literature. Every one of the classes named are inventive and imaginative, therefore fictitious. After having formed so broad a basis as this, the task to prove that it is right to read such works, we think, will not be difficult.

The question might be asked, For what purpose are books read? What end is there to be served in the reading of books, of whatsoever kind? Books may be read for profit and for pleasure. We read, to get thoughts, as well as matter for thought.~ Much that is true and much that is beautiful comes to us in reading. The mind is developed by reading; ideas that were crude and unformed, without shape, order, or natural sequence, have given to them

ripeness, form, and connection. The heart and the affections are by reading put under the government of the judgment, directed into their true courses; and by it we learn to love that which is lovable, and to do that which is worth doing. Truth comes home to us in books; the truth of past ages;-truth of thought and of action; the truth of the present, the distant.

Now it is probable that, in this discussion, those who take the negative side will confine themselves entirely to that kind of fiction called “novels." I am willing that it should be so; for as to the other classes, there is a universal practice which proves that there need be no argument to establish its rightness. All men that read and study that literature which has been defined by De Quincey as the "literature of power," in contrast to that which is simply the "literature of knowledge," read in some, if not all the classes stated above. But all do not read novels. In fact, there is in many minds and many circles a deep prejudice against them; and those who do read them are by some denounced unsparingly, as engaged in a time-wasting and mind-destroying occupation. This prejudice against novel reading is an unreasonable one, and no amount of denunciation will supply the place of calm reasoning, which finds it out to be so.

It may tend to clear the ground and to guard against misapprehension, if we should at once admit that it is quite possible to abuse novel-reading—to go to excess in it. Some read nothing else; neither do such read them carefully, studiously, but devouringly. They seem to be set on showing how many pages their eyes can travel over in a given time. This is unmitigated foolishness, and the grave of all mind. Vacancy and sentimentalism are the natural results of such a course of reading continued over any length of time.

It is right to draw a distinction between good and bad novels; between those that are morbid and unhealthy and those that are healthy; between those that are pure in their morality and the impure. We are quite aware that criticism is, in many respects, as yet a wayward calling, for want of universally recognized standards by which to judge of books; yet still there is one touchstone that is certain, and to which all must come, the moral character of a book; does it tend to foster virtue, a love of truth, and right-doing? For books have a moral character as well as men. Following up this last idea, it will scarcely be objected that a novel may have a moral tone that is pure; likewise those who have read extensively in this line will bear me out in saying that numbers of novels have this purity of tone. The lessons taught, the warnings and encouragements given, are such as to dissuade from vice, and to encourage to virtue. That lying, cunning, hatred, and all abomination receive their well-merited rebuke; that truth, manliness, courage, and all things pure and of good report, their righteous condemnation. If novels are not found that teach in this way, then it is the fault of the writers; for if the writer be himself

essentially pure, however much he may err as an artist, he will not err as a practical moralist.

A novel may be a true work of art. "All art," says P. Bayne, "originates in those instincts which prompt man to effect something in the way of imitation and construction." Again, "the imitative instinct, rejoicing. in any representation by which man summons up before his senses what in nature is already produced for him; and the creative instinct, impelling man to recombine, to adorn, to better nature. In these two art begins; in the satisfaction of these two art reaches its consummation." Now in these definitions we have clearly brought before us the two characteristics distinguishing all works of art; and here it may be easily seen that our greatest novel-writers work after the principles of art. Indeed, their works cannot be other than "imitative and constructive." To give pictures of life; to set forth in distinctness motives of action, is their business. Every form of life that is in the present, that has been in the past, is by them, according to the strength of their own conception, daguerreotyped for us. In this respect they are imitative. But men of genius do not halt here; for having the real as a basis, they improve upon it; touching with a pencil of light that which is faded and obscure; giving poetry and motion to that which is commonplace and lifeless. Here they are constructive. Fulfilling the conditions which are necessary in the production of any work of art-although working, perhaps, in what is not the highest department of art-the successful novelist will have the satisfaction of knowing that he is labouring for the improvement and elevation of his kind, and that his work will not be in vain.

The hard, indirect thinkers of any age exercise but a slight and indirect influence on the common mind; but those who, being not so much thinkers as seers, blend with their utterances fancy and imagination, have the most direct and essential influence, and are the most continuously read. Among this class are novelists; and so long as we may name among such, writers like Thackeray, Scott, and Lytton, there is no fear but what they shall continue to be read; no fear, also, but by them the cause of truth and virtue shall be made stronger; and no good man, least of all a lover of human progress, shall affect to despise, or doggedly clamour down, so powerful an engine for the delectation and profit of his species. H. M.

WRONG. IV.

As the natural light from the sun enables us to see everything more distinctly, and to discover many things in a room which by candlelight we could not see at all, so, in like manner, and in a like degree, the teaching of experience in practical matters by far exceeds that of the clearest and seemingly most accurate of theories. In seeking after truth, with regard to any subject, it is surely more convincing to ascertain what is, than merely to know what our

reason judges would be-to discover what the person or thing has done, than merely to perceive what it might be expected to do We shall therefore give an outline of our own experience on the subject of novel-reading.

At the age of fourteen the writer of this article left his country home, from which he had never before been absent for any length of time, and entered a large printing establishment in London, not knowing a single creature in the whole metropolis. For some time previous to this the reading of solid and useful books had been his chief delight, and for one so young (pardon the appearance of egotism) he had the reputation of possessing a good capacity for understanding what he read; thanks for this is due in no small measure to the strict discipline of his parental instructor. Whilst at his business in the printing office fragmentary sheets of various novels passed through his hands, but none particularly attracted his notice till he met with the first sheets of "East Lynne," by Mrs. Wood. One of Hallam's works had been brought to the office, and put in his desk for perusal during the dinner-hour, but this was soon put aside when "East Lynne" appeared. The sheets which did not in the course of business fall into his hands were diligently sought out and eagerly read. Soon after he left this establishment, and entered a different kind of business, living in the house of his employer. Here he met with persons breathing the very spirit of fiction, and who could scarcely live in any other atmosphere. One of the first novels he met with here was "Mrs. Haliburton's Troubles," also by Mrs. Wood. He afterwards read "The Pickwick Papers" and Nicholas Nickleby," by Dickens; and "Pickwick Abroad," by Reynolds. He then began to see the injurious effect which this kind of reading had upon his mind. It gave him a distaste for such works as the British Controversialist; it led him into a habit of reading unthinkingly the most suggestive books; it lessened his relish for diving into the real meaning of solid works; and it likewise produced great mental indolence. He therefore resolved to abandon such reading; but just after he had made the resolve, "Quentin Durward," by Sir Walter Scott, fell into his hands. Having heard and read much of Sir W. Scott, he was tempted to read it; desire got the better of judgment, and he yielded to the temptation. This was, however, the last work of fiction which he read; and though nearly two years have passed since then, he does not in the least regret the abandonment of this pursuit. He looks back upon the time past, and asks himself what good he has derived from the perusal of novels? The only answer he can give is, Pleasure, pleasure, but no real profit."

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During this time he read the articles on The Art of Reasoning," in the first two vols. of this Magazine, and then they appeared to him a mere collection of words hard to be understood; but he has since then studied them, and derived great benefit therefrom. Then, indulging in the perusal of works of fiction, his mind was too pre-occupied, too enfeebled, and too wandering to profit by the