"We have gone quite far enough in the mechanical development of the common school system. What we most need is the breath of life, and reading offers the noblest means for receiving and imparting this breath of life. The spiritual element in education in our common schools will be found to lie in reserve in literature, and, as I believe, most effectively in American literature. "Think for a moment of that great, silent, resistless power for good which might at this moment be lifting the youth of the country, were the hours for reading in school expended upon the undying, life-giving books! Think of the substantial growth of a generous Americanism, were the boys and girls to be fed from the fresh springs of American literature! It would be no narrow provincialism into which they would emerge. The windows in Longfellow's mind looked to the east, and the children who have entered into possession of his wealth travel far. Bryant's flight carries one through upper air, over broad champaigns. The lover of Emerson has learned to get a remote vision. The companion of Thoreau finds Concord become suddenly the centre of a very wide horizon. Irving has annexed Spain to America. Hawthorne has nationalized the gods of Greece and given an atmosphere to New England. Whittier has translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the American dialect. Lowell gives the American boy an academy without cutting down a stick of timber in the grove, or disturbing the birds. Holmes supplies that hickory which makes one careless of the crackling of thorns. Franklin makes the America of a past generation a part of the great world before treaties had bound the floating states into formal connection with venerable nations. What is all this but saying that the rich inheritance we have is no local ten-acre lot, but a part of the undivided estate of humanity. Universality, Cosmopolitanism,--these are fine words, but no man ever secured the freedom of the Universe who did not first pay taxes and vote in his own village."--"Literature in School" (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.). 9. The series of American classics is nowise confined to the ideas of local or national patriotism, but above and beyond that deep and powerful sentiment which magnifies the opportunity and manifest destiny of our nation, it grasps at the ideal form and content of those Christian virtues which now and evermore carry healing and comfort to the toiling millions. Our poets, as they have pondered on the past and looked into the future, were not able to be content with less than the best. As the vision of the coming years unrolled itself before them they looked upon it with joy mingled with solicitude. In the mighty conflicts now upon us only those of generous and saintly purpose and of pure hearts can prevail.