Shelley's "Defence of Poetry" (edited by Cook, and published by Ginn & Co.) is a literary masterpiece of rare beauty and charm. Emerson's "Essay on History." George Willis Cooke, "Poets and Problems" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). The first chapter, "The Poet as Teacher," is very suggestive, while the chapters on Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning are fine introductions for those who will study the authors themselves. "The Book Lover," James Baldwin (McClurg & Co.). Charles Kingsley's "Literary and General Essays" (Macmillan & Co.). Chapter on "English Literature," and others. Scudder's "Literature in Schools" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). Excellent for teachers. J. C. Shairp, "On Poetic Interpretation of Nature" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). Matthew Arnold's "Sweetness and Light." Lowell's "Books and Libraries" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). Edmund Clarence Stedman's "The Nature and Elements of Poetry" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). It is not implied that even the essays of critics on the merits of literature can take the place of a study of the works of the best writers. CHAPTER II THE USE OF MASTERPIECES AS WHOLES With the increasing tendency to consider the literary quality and fitness of the reading matter used in our schools, longer poems and stories, like "Snow Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," "Hiawatha," "Aladdin," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," "The Great Stone Face," and even "Lady of the Lake" and "Julius Cæsar," are read and studied as complete wholes. Many of the books now used as readers are not collections of short selections and extracts, as formerly, but editions of single poems, or kindred groups, like "Sohrab and Rustum," or the "Arabian Nights," or "Gulliver's Travels," or a collection of a few complete stories or poems of a single author, as Hawthorne's "Stories of the White Hills," or Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal," and other poems. Even the regular series of readers are often made up largely of longer poems and prose masterpieces. The significance of this change is the deeper regard which is being paid to good literature as a strong agency of true culture. The real thought and the whole thought of the best authors is sought for, presupposing, of course, that they are within the range of the children's comprehension. The reading books of a generation ago contained oftentimes just as choice literary materials as now; but the chief purpose of its selection was to give varied exercise in oral reading, not to cultivate a taste for good literature by furnishing complete poetic and prose specimens for full and enthusiastic study. The teachers who lay stress on elocutionary skill are not quite satisfied with this drift toward literary study as such. It remains to be seen how both aims, good oral rendering and superior literary training, can be secured at the same time.