The cordial reception awarded to the best class of American books in England, is indicated by the following notices from the _Oldham Evening & Weekly Chronicle_ of October 4: "FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW. By Margaret Sidney. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. This gorgeously got up and profusely and beautifully illustrated volume is one of engrossing interest. All the characters are skilfully drawn, the events are interestingly marshalled, and the plot most naturally developed. For humour and pathos, for sympathy yet fidelity, for loftiness of tone yet simplicity of style, this charming volume has few superiors. Here and there it reminds us of Mark Twain, anon of Dickens, and often of George Eliot, for the authoress has many of the strong points of all these writers. Such wholesome and bracing literature as this may well find its place in all our homes. It is a tale of a high order, and is a real study of life. It is fresh, breezy, bracing. It is strengthening and enthralling." "CAMBRIDGE SERMONS. By Rev. Alexander McKenzie. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. This neatly and strongly got up volume consists of sixteen fresh, vigorous, chatty, colloquial sermons. The author has the solidity of the Scotch teacher, and the polish and beauty of the English preacher combined with the freedom, the raciness, interest, and the freshness of the American pulpit orator. These discourses are orations which were delivered extemporaneously and taken down by a shorthand writer. Hence they are homely, yet eloquent; natural, yet cultivated, and come right home to the hearts of the readers. No one could tire reading these sermons. They are as racy as a magazine article, as instructive as a lecture, and as impressive and lofty as a message from God. They are thoroughly American for their fearlessness, their living energy, and their originality. Sermons of this high order are sure to be in demand." * * * * * GOOD READING. A glance at the way reading is generally taught in our schools will convince any impartial observer that this subject is made the driest and dreariest of all studies. In our graded schools, children generally read, on an average, an hour a day during the eight or nine years' course, at the rate of less than one book a year. The average child easily learns by heart in a few weeks all there is in the first three books, after that the constant repetitions are in the highest degree monotonous. There is nothing to attract his attention or stimulate his love for reading. The selections filling fourth, fifth and sixth readers are too often far above the mental grasp of the pupil, and are also of so fragmentary a nature as to be almost unintelligible to the average student. Word pronouncing, and that alone, is the only refuge of the teacher.