Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1876-01-06

olutely assign to any science or lang
uage those lnsterstitial vacancies which
intervene in the most busy employ
ment would find every day new IRA
diations of knowledge
Do not avoid works of fiction, nor,
on the other hand make them your
chief reading. The latter units on e
for real life by creating distaste for
its ordinary and homely duties it
gives undue prominence to the romantic
| side Of life. Furthermore, it gives no
exercise to the intellectual faculty, and
trains one to indolent, passive mental
habit. 1t is ready>made pap, and gives
to the mind no exercise in receiving or
digesting it. But fiction has its legiti-
mate office. The Book of Job is un
doubtedly a drama, the visions Of
Isaiah are divine poems, our Lord
spoke in parallels, and the greatest
modern work on practical religion is
the allegory of John Bunyan, the
dreamer Of Bedford Jail. All good
writing has in it an element of fiction,
not in the facts, but in the artistic sar~
rangement of them, which the original
documents never furnish. Gibbon and
Macaulay owe almost as muchsto the
imagination as Scott does. Their
works are grand epics, not differing
from those Of poets in plan, 'ssbut in
being wholly founded on facts. Scott,
in some of his novels, gives the spirit
of an age more trti1y.. perhaps than any
historian.
To bring course of reading within
very ones reach. / will give selection
in chronological order both of authors
and of their works, which may be
abridged if necessary. Passing over
Cnaueer and Spencer, the two earliest,
on account of their antique dress, you
may take of Shakespeare, Macbeth,
Othello, Lear and Tempest; of Bacon,
his Essays on Studies, Discourse,
Friendship and Great Place of Hook
er. the first book of his Ecclesiastical
Polity; of Hall. a few of his earliest
CONCENTRATIONS; and of Taylor, his
Holy Living, or Life of Christ. Those
whose time is very limited can omit the
foregoing. Then you may take-of
Milton the first book of Paradise Lost,
and his smaller poems; of Addison,
select essays of the Spectator, such as
Roger de Coverly; of Pope, the Essay
on Man and Rape of the Lock; of
Goldsmith, his Traveller, Deserted
Village, and Citizen of the World; of
Chillingworth, the Religion of the
Protestants (but this may be omitted) !;
of johnson, the Rambler, or Lives of
the Poets, Boswell's Life of johnson !;
of Thompson, The Seasons, and Castle
Of Incidence; of Cowper, The Task,
and his letters of Burke, Reflections !;
on the French Revolution of Foster,
his Essay on Decision of Character of
Hall, oh Modern Infdelity of Byron,
Childe Harold, and for epistolary style,
his letters of Rogers, Italy, and he
Pleasures of Memory of Colerldge,
his shorter poems; Chalmers Astron.
omlcal Discoveries Macintosh's De-
fence of the French, Revolution of
Macaulay, his Critical and Historical
Essays; of Washington Irving, his
Life of Washington, and Columbus,
and the works of Scott, Tia ackeray,
Dickens. Tennyson and Longfellow,
from whom will make no selections,
for you can hardly go amiss.
l have but gone partially over a
great subject, giving only few hints
on reading. A full treatment of all its
parts, for which l do not profess to be
competent would require too much
time for the occasion. Literature is
many sided and no one man can ever
have all sides in his view. Each can
give only the aspect under which he
eontemplates it and would be likely to
give only the impressions it has made
on his individual mind. You have one
member, probably more who could
instruct and entertain you on other
parts of this subject, or supplement
those facts upon which l have merely
touched and conclude by recommend.
ing that you call upon that member to
contribute at some convenient time
from his stores of knowledge what he
can so well say on the sebject of read
ing. You could hardly spend an
evening more useful. -4Staunton Tin-
dicator
The steamer w. S. Pike was burned
to the waters edge at New Orleans last
Friday morning, with most OF her car
go of cotton, sugar and molasses. Mr.
Bonnie, one of her clerks, with several