Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-11-21


Readers Of books have been divided into
several classes, as: they who read for anu e.
ment; they who read for information-in
matters fact and they who read for in
struction-in matters or doctrine or opin-
ion. This division, howevcr-or indeed
any other lis merely arbitrary; for as
there are probably no two writers whose
aims and views of the ends of authorship
are precisely the same; or whose produc-
tions can be accurately described by the
same collocation of language, so there are
no two readers that prescribe to themselves
exactly the same goal to be reached by the
course of reading which they pursue. Mind
and its productions, SO far as they are valua-
bic, are individual; we classify intellects
and literature for the sake of convenience;
but all classification is arbitrary-never bet
ter than an approximation, and frequently
unjust Literature suffers under attempts
to distribute it rigidly into departments;
and minds are in thousand cases divested
of their activity by the effort to compel one
to course that has seemed beneficial to an
other.
Voluntary readers are impelled by Curl
osity to know what the books which they
read contain-which constitutes an appetite;
and in order to profit by reading of any
kind this appetite must be present a
| craving which is. natural, and which only
| to q limited degree, if at all, can be aroused
| or directed by the will. And as the mental
appetite is just as individual-just as much
the peculiar property of its possessor-as the
physical, in the selection of books to be read,
the best rule is to choose such as will inter-
est in the perusal, no matter in what par
ticular department of letters they may be
eatalogued: because if the appetite is absent
little good need be expected from the read
ing. The mipd is like the body in its choice
of ailments. Its demands may sometimes
be incrdinate and need little judicous re-
straint; but as the system that is obliged to
receive food for which it has no inclination
speedily becomes inert or dyspeptic, so the
mind crammed with uncongenial learning
will not fail to repay the false treatment
with a retributive stupidity or perversity.
Parents often feel troubled because their
children manifest no disposition to read
aught but what they are prone to look upon
as books merely of amusement--as volumes
of fiction or poetry-calculated as they es-
TEEN it, to enervate their powers and render
them visionary and impractical. They want
to see them take up some thing useful as
they term it; and are found not unfrequently
employing measures of constraint, to turn
the errant minds into what they deem 0
better channel. Yet it is probable that there
is as much profit in the aggregate realized
to mankind from the perusal of books o
poetry and fiction as from those in any Other
department The betSay of these embody
the best philosophy of the time when they
were produced. Shakespeare, in just concep.
tions of man, his character and obligations
which alone constitute true philosophy
was far in advance of the dogmatists ant
system-makers of his day; and the sam
may be said of Fielding, Smollett, Addison
Pope, and, especially of Sir Walter Scott
The philosophy of Dickens, received with
out difficulty in the palatable medium
through which it is presented, would bt
rejected by thousands who now accept i
without difficulty, if nodded into system
and laid before the world in dogmati
treatise.
Parents who make out rigid courses .
reading for their children with a view L
hurry them into proficiency in some particu
lar branch of learning should bear this il
mind. The mental appetite of the child
the instructive, and therefore the infallibl
measure of its own capacity. No more thai
the body can the mind be urged or coerce
into a state of preternatural expansion
Crookedness, inertia and disproportion vii
be the only sure results of all attempts t
scourge nature into quicker gait than sh
has herself selected; and nobody is more t
be pitied than the little boy or girl who's
dawning intellect is full of poetry and pas
sionate cravings for novelty and variety, an
who under the regimen devised by guar
dian with more zeal than discretion has bee
forced, for example, into course of histor
cal reading, the only possible effect of whic
is to deaden the powers and create an il
: superable disgust for that branch Of study
all future time, without storing the min
with a single one of the desirable results {
historic research.