The study of a poem or other masterpiece in this way, to get at its inner life and continuity, reveals to us an interesting process of mental elaboration and comparative thought. Such self-active reflection is the subsoiling of the mind. To set children to work upon problems of this sort, to put them in the way of thinking and feeling for themselves, and that too even in the longer classics like "Evangeline," "Enoch Arden," "Silas Marner," etc., is to bring such studies into the realm of great culture-producing agencies. Many minor questions of method will be solved by having these centres of thought, these problems for thinkers. Teachers are bothered to know what sort of questions to ask. It would be safe to say, those questions which move in the direction of the main truth, toward the solution of the chief problem. But let the questions be shrewd, not revealing too much, stimulating to thoughtfulness and heading off errors. To what extent shall geographical, historical, or biographical facts be gathered for the enrichment and clarifying of the poem? Those materials which throw necessary light on the essential ideas, omitting what is irrelevant and secondary. A careful study of the life of Alexander, by Plutarch, will bring to light, more than anything else, his magnanimity. The thing that so much distinguished him from other men was his large, liberal temper, displayed on many various occasions. It reminds the mature student of that remarkable utterance of Burke, "Great affairs and little minds go ill together." The large-minded statesmanship with which Burke discusses conciliation with the colonies is of like quality with this magnanimous spirit of Alexander. One who reads receptively Emerson's "The Fortune of the Republic" will open his eyes on two opposite but closely related ideas, the serious faults,--the low political tone, the materialism, the spread-eagle strut and slovenly mediocrity of much in American life,--and over against this the splendid promise, manliness, and intense idealism of our national life. To work out this conception in the brains of young people and let it kindle their hearts with some true glow of patriotism, is the highest form of teaching. Such instruction would convert every schoolhouse into a true temple of freedom and patriotism.