writing out, from a good dictionary, the Latin roots of words opposite the words themselves, he will in a short time begin to look with a different light upon the meanings of words. Take the words "amorous," from amor, love; "uxoriousness,"-uxor, a wife; "inimical" -in, not, amicus, a friend, and other simple derivations, as instances. When the student knows the real meaning of these and such like, he may be led not to use them; in fact, he may think that "loving," "wife-loving," and "unfriendly," all English words, are just as good, if not better; but he will find that the Latinised English has a slightly different meaning. An amorous man means something not so noble as a loving man; one who is uxorious is weakly fond of his wife; and so on. Read in this way, passages of little meaning become instinct with life, beauties appear in writers which were never seen before, swelling words of leader-writers and public orators become merely swelling words or nonsense, and the calm writing of the wise man gains considerably in strength. Nor need he be afraid of having to learn too much to get at the meaning of words. We have it on record (said, too, in a friendly way, by one who was a great scholar, Ben Jonson) that Shakespeare "had small Latin and less Greek ;" but yet it is well known that no man knew better how to use English words than he did; that some of his lines convey more than whole pages of other writers; nay, that he himself has invented, in spite of his want of learning, numerous excellent words, which express to the mind, as a picture does to the eye, exactly what the author means. Presuming, then, that not a perfect, but a fair acquaintance with Latin and French can be gained,

NATURE OF THE WORK.

even in the course of his reading, by the student who is anxious to instruct himself, I will now enter upon the subject proper of the present volume.*

• It has been thought advisable to incorporate a number of specimens of various authors in the present volume. A mere list of names and dates, coupled with brief criticisms-and these last, however carefully prepared, are more or less unsatisfactory, unless supplemented with examples-cannot but be unprofitable at all times to the elementary student. As to the nature of the extracts, I may say that they have been newly selected, with very few exceptions, from the originals, for the present work. In doing this, I have endeavoured to avoid the well-worn tracks of most of the books of specimens that are at present current.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDY OF HISTORY.

H

ISTORY," says the quaint but full and sufficient author, Thomas Fuller, in his "History of the Church," "maketh a young man to be old without either wrinkles or grey hairs, privileging him with the experience of age without either the infirmities or the inconveniences thereof." This estimate of history is hardly sufficient: it takes only one view. It is a grand thing to be gifted with the judgment and experience of age when young, to know what results certain experiments will lead to, to be able to stem or to foretell a revolution, or to "wield at will the fierce democratie:" but there is another use for history. Without it we can know nothing of our country. It is like a fieldglass, which gives us a long backward view over the painful passage of our fathers, and which, turned forwards, will enable us to make out, with some little distinctness at least, the career which our children will have to run. Without history, man loses much of his grandeur and his place in the world; for, as Shakespeare has so acutely said, one of his chief mental character

HISTORY, ITS USE.

13

istics consists in his "looking before and after." Now, unless he knows what his country has passed through, her trials, struggles, endeavours, how can he know what her liberties, her privileges, and her blessings are? The danger of a new or of an old country being represented and governed by an ignorant and unthinking class is this that, looking chiefly to the present, forgetful of the landmarks of history, without any sense of danger, heedless, because ignorant, of the warnings around them, they drive the ship of the State on the rocks, and wreck her before they know where they are. Ignorant of the past, they are contentious, and ungrateful for the present; Utopian in their notions, they outreach possibility, and are causelessly and ceaselessly disappointed. To instance a case which will touch us all: Irish demagogues have appealed to the history of Ireland, saying that the people have been oppressed and dispossessed of their rights, and have talked of the glorious days of the old kings, as they now appeal to an imaginary republic. But History— that of Giraldus Cambrensis as a chronicle, of Dr. Thomas Leland as a philosophic, or of Thomas Moore as a compendious narrative-tells us that Ireland never had a king, but merely a set of native chiefs, almost as savage as are the New Zealanders now; that the Septs ravaged and fought each other, sometimes eating their enemies in wild brutality, always at war, until they voluntarily called in the (English) Norman knights to pacify the land by making one party dominant; that government after government, from that of Henry II., who first of our kings called himself Lord of Ireland, to that of the wise Elizabeth, and thence to that of the stern Cromwell; from William III. to that of the just

and generous Victoria, has always found the Irish turbulent, jealous of each other, distrustful of strangers, and hating even that clemency and mercy which they experience under an English government, and those civilising laws and civic rights which they never enjoyed under their own. Contemporary history again, and the knowledge obtained by travelling, will help us to know, and in our case to understand and to love, our own land; for everything in this world is comparative, and it is the greatest proof of ignorance that any one can give, to disparage institutions without understanding them, to attempt matters which are impossible, to render men discontented with that which no State can alter, and to sow discord between class and class, when true knowledge has declared that progress can spring from peace alone. Therefore it is that "histories," says Lord Bacon, "make men wise;" and he adds that, in proportion as we love our country, we shall desire to know its origin, progress, and its steps towards civilisation, and that which has led to its present importance or degradation in the scale of nations.

The readiest way to acquire this knowledge-and we are writing especially for self-improvers-is to begin first with little books. Thomas à Kempis said that he was fond of two things, from which he got much of his humble wisdom; and these were "little corners and little books." Now, not only are great books great evils, but they often are so diffuse in style, and so wanting in arrangement, that they confuse instead of teach. Our student's first plan should be to survey the country, and to survey the history of the country some such hand-books as Goldsmith's " England," the "Victoria History of England," or Ince's