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classes, where those explanations can be given in English and thus offer an excellent opportunity and the best subject matter for orally practising the foreign language.— As a summary and winding up of such a course of reading I should recommend the first or introductory chapter of Macaulay’s History of England, that masterly sketch of the evolution of the English polity.

Whether cause or effect— probably both— the individual character of the English offers a striking parallel to their political constitution as a nation. An Englishman is generally loyally attached to tradition in doctrine as well as in customs, to whatever is sanctioned by precedent; but he does not become its slave, he reserves his right of dissent and of opposition, his individual liberty, even to extravagance. Nowhere could we find a more general conformity in opinions and in manners, and yet nowhere more genuine originality in individuals. Each bears the typical stamp of the Englishman, and yet each is as emphatically himself, as distinct and different from any other, as one leaf of an oak is from all other leaves of the same tree. This, no doubt, is the chief cause why English literature, even in works of fiction, more than any other presents us with characters so real, so individual that we can scarcely imagine they are not flesh and blood, they have not been drawn from life by close and correct observation. Their every word, every act spring from their own individual nature; nothing is arbitrary, they could not have thought, felt, spoken, behaved otherwise.

Whatever there is sound and true in modern realism and naturalism may be found, generally better, in the best English writers of all centuries. These qualities are, of course, most striking and important in dramatic works; but they are equally observable in the novel which from them derives its chief interest and often its superiority.

If this be the peculiar character, honorably distinctive, of English literature, then, as its study is to complete what our pupils may have derived from Latin, French, German, let us give the preference to those English authors who most eminently possess those qualities: individuality and reality in the delineation of human character. We shall generally find that they are the best in other respects too. Shakespeare, the greatest scrutinizer of the human heart that ever was, stands also preeminent through his consummate dramatic art, his superior wisdom and depth of thought, his pithy language and infinite variety of style, now of enchanting sweetness, now pathetic and sublime, here terse, concise, grave, there quaint and humorous— always, to the purpose, adapted to the character and to the situation.

Speaking of humour, we must not forget to point out this particular quality which is so peculiarly English, that nearly all other languages have been fain to borrow the word itself. Wherever, therefore, we find genuine humour, this„wit of the heart“, this„smile through tears,“ we are on true English ground, and such an author, such a work will open to us the hidden treasures of the English mind, will make us understand its sterling qualities even when they