The second danger, that of making too great a demand upon the child, is one which, to some extent, besets all school work to-day, but which seems to be especially great and especially disastrous in the case of the study we are considering. Often the nature of the questions asked shows one form of this demand in a way that is nothing less than preposterous. Children in secondary schools are required to have original ideas in regard to the character of Lady Macbeth; to define the workings of the mind of Shylock; to produce personal opinions in the discussion of the madness of Hamlet. Children whose highest acquirements in English composition do not and cannot reach beyond the plainest expository statement of simple facts and ideas, are coolly requested to discriminate between the style of "Il Penseroso" and that of "L'Allegro," and to show how each is adapted to the purpose of the poet. If they were allowed to write from the point of view of a child, the matter would be bad enough; but no teacher who sets such a task would be satisfied with anything properly belonging to the child-mind. It is probably safe to be tolerably certain that no teacher ever gave out this sort of a question who could without cribbing from the critics perform satisfactorily the task laid upon the unfortunate children. I have before me a pamphlet entitled "Suggestions for Teachers of English Classics in the High Schools." It is not a gracious task to find fault with a fellow worker and a fellow writer in the same line in which I am myself offering suggestions, and I therefore simply put it to the common sense of teachers what the effect upon the average high school pupil would be if he were confronted with questions such as are included in the proposed outline for the study of "Evangeline." The author of the pamphlet directs that these points are to be used "after some power of analysis has been developed." The language. Relative proportion of English and Latin. Archaic element, proportion and use. Weight of the style; presentative and symbolic words. Emotional element; experimental significance of terms. Picture-element; prevailing character of figures of speech. The structure. Grammatical. Poetic uses of words; archaisms, poetic forms. Poetic uses of parts of speech, parse.[42:1] Poetic constructions and inversions, analyze. Metrical. Number and character of metrical "feet." Accent and quantity, the spondee. Scan selected lines, compare with classic hexameter. Compare hexameter with other verse-forms. Character of rhyme, compare with other poems. Presence and use of alliteration. Musical.