Make two paragraphs out of each of the following quotations:

Books. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am,-no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling,—if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,-if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.-Channing.

EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. -For the purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question whether he himself have or have not children to be benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property and life and the peace of society are secured. We hope to excite a feeling of responsibility and a sense of character, by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law and the denunciation of religion, against immorality and crime. Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused.-Daniel Webster.

Make four paragraphs out of the following selection:

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world. A word, a trait, in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlineations of life, and, veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide-abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.-Shelly.

EXERCISE XXII.

Faulty Diction.

Man, in fact, only obtains the use of his faculties in obtaining the use of speech, for language is the indispensable means of the development of his natural powers, whether intellectual or moral.—Sir William Hamilton.

The right use of words is not a matter to be left to pedants and pedagogues. It belongs to the daily life of every man. The misuse of words confuses ideas, and impairs the value of language as a means of communication. Hence loss of time, of money, and sore trial of patience. It is significant that we call a quarrel a misunderstanding. -Richard Grant White.

"I went to the club last night," writes Oliver Wendell Holmes in one of those delightful letters of his to John Lothrop Motley, “and met some of the friends you always like to hear of. I sat by the side of Emerson, who always charms me with his delicious voice, his fine sense and wit, and the delicate way he steps about among the words of his vocabulary,—if you have seen a cat picking her footsteps in wet weather, you have seen the picture of Emerson's exquisite intelligence, feeling for its phrase or epithet. Sometimes I think of an ant-eater singling out his insects, as I see him looking about and at last seizing his noun or adjective,-the best, the only one that would serve the need of his thought.”—Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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You might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough), and still remain an utterly illiterate," uneducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,— that is to say, with real accuracy,—you are forevermore in some measure an educated person. A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages,-may not be able to speak any but his own, -may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows he knows precisely.-John Ruskin.

An accurate knowledge and a correct and felicitous use of words are, of themselves, almost sure proofs of good breeding. No doubt it marks a weak mind to care more for the casket than for the jewel it contains to prefer elegantly turned sentences to sound sense; but sound sense always acquires additional value when expressed in pure English. Moreover, he who carefully studies accuracy of expression, the proper choice and arrangement of words in any language, will be also advancing towards accuracy of thought as well as towards propriety and energy of speech, "for divers philosophers hold," says Shakespeare, "that the lip is parcel of the mind." Few things are more ludicrous than the blunders by which even persons moving in refined society often betray the grossest ignorance of very common words. William Mathews.

The English language abounds in synonyms, or words of similar, but not quite identical, meaning. These words must be carefully distinguished, for on the understanding of these differences is based the mastery of English.

The following brief discussion of the right and the wrong use of words is given in the hope that it will call the attention of the pupil to the importance of choosing the right word and stimulate him to a further study of this subject.

In the choice of words, we have to consider the selection of such words as express, with accuracy, what is meant, their adaptability to the writer's purpose, and their appropriateness to the matter in hand.

The following books of reference should be found on every teacher's desk: "The Verbalist," by Alfred Ayres; "Words and their Uses," by Richard Grant White; "Words, their Use and Abuse," by William Mathews; "Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions," by James E. Fernald.

TO THE TEACHER: The examples of faulty diction here given, though few, are sufficient to illustrate the clauses of faulty usage the pupil should guard against.

Require the pupil to use the words briefly discussed in this lesson in original sentences. Require him to bring to the class other words that are often misused and show why one should be chosen in preference to the other. This subject can be indefinitely enlarged by the teacher.

"Come and see

And. And is often misused for to; as, me." "Try and do what you can for him."

"Go and see your brother." In such sentences use to, not and.

All over. "The disease spread all over the country." Say "The disease spread over all the country."

Adjective, Adverb. If a phrase denoting manner could be substituted, the adverb should be used; but if some part of the verb to be could be employed as a connective, the adjective is required; as, "The physician felt his pulse carefully [that is, in a careful manner] and observed that the patient's hand felt cold [that is, was cold to the touch].” It is correct to say, "He feels sad." "It looks bad." smells sweet."

"It

Apprehend, Comprehend. Apprehend is often misused for comprehend. Perception apprehends; conception comprehends. Both express an effort of the thinking faculty. To apprehend is simply to take an idea into the mind; to comprehend an idea is fully to understand it in its various relations to what is already in the mind.

Apt, Liable, Likely. Apt implies natural fitness or tendency; as, "He is an apt scholar." An impetuous person

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