Ah! but I have seen far worse than that. I have visited and condemned rural schools where the practice was to stand a class up--- say a class of thirty children--and make them read in unison: which meant, of course, that the front row chanted out the lesson while the back rows made inarticulate noises. I well remember one such exhibition, in a remote country school on the Cornish hills, and having my attention arrested midway by the face of a girl in the third row. She was a strikingly beautiful child, with that combination of bright auburn, almost flaming, hair with dark eyebrows, dark eyelashes, dark eyes, which of itself arrests your gaze, being so rare; and those eyes seemed to challenge me half scornfully and ask, 'Are you really taken in by all this?' Well, I soon stopped the performance and required each child to read separately: whereupon it turned out that, in the upper standards of this school of 70 or 80 children, one only-- this disdainful girl--could get through half a dozen easy sentences with credit. She read well and intelligently, being accustomed to read to herself, at home. I daresay that this bad old method of block-reading is dead by this time. Reading aloud and _separately_ is excellent for several purposes. It tests capacity: it teaches correct pronunciation by practice, as well as the mastery of difficult words: it provides a good teacher with frequent opportunities of helping the child to understand what he reads. But as his schooling proceeds he should be accustomed more and more to read to himself: for that, I repeat, is the master-key. LECTURE IV CHILDREN'S READING (II) WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1917 I In our talk, Gentlemen, about Children's Reading we left off upon a list, drawn up by Mr Holmes in his book 'What Is, and What Might Be,' of the things that, apart from physical nourishment and exercise, a child instinctively desires. He desires (1) to talk and to listen; (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word); (3) to draw, paint and model; (4) to dance and sing; (5) to know the why of things; (6) to construct things. Let us scan through this catalogue briefly, in its order. No. (1). _To talk and to listen_--Mr Holmes calls this _the communicative instinct._ Every child wants to talk with those about him, or at any rate with his chosen ones--his parents, brothers, sisters, nurse, governess, gardener, boot-boy (if he possess these last)--with other children, even if his dear papa is poor: to tell them what he has been doing, seeing, feeling: and to listen to what they have to tell him.