GENERAL PREFACE. THE first purpose of a series of Reading Books is to furnish a succession of lessons of such a character as to teach children to read and to implant in their minds the love of reading. It is also requisite to inform and exercise the understanding, to nourish and guide the feelings, and to point the way to further sources of interesting information and of healthy sentiment. How these objects have been kept in view in the present series is indicated generally in the brief Notes prefixed to the several Books. The selection of matter is governed by numerous and complicated considerations. A sustained endeavour has been made to select the various subjects and arrange their prominent aspects in a certain order of progression. The opening eyes of the pupils are turned to the objects and facts and processes of the world around them in a rough order of interest and of mental development. After the Fourth Book is reached the subjects rapidly extend, and only the more outstanding points can be seized, so that the orderly progression becomes less marked. A systematic and exhaustive exposition of any one subject in a manner suited to the age of the pupils appealed to has not been attempted; this, it is believed, must, on pain of complete failure, be left to special Primers. Reading Books may, however, usefully anticipate or supplement the technical and detailed exposition of Primers, by selecting the more prominent points of the more popular branches and illustrating these at some length and in distinctively literary form, with such collateral helps from poetry and romance as may tend to attract the young mind to a more intimate future study of some one or more of such branches. The scientific subject that lends itself most willingly to such illustration is at the same time the most popular of all. The lessons on points of Physical Geography and on allied subjects are consequently numerous and important. Remarkable historical events are similarly illustrated from the writings of celebrated historians. Some of the leading elementary and ever-recurring points of Political Economy are also pleasantly handled. How different peoples have their being under most diverse conditions is partially exemplified. The various virtues are strongly inculcated, always preferably by example or by other indirect enforcement. The poetical passages leave untouched but few of the notes in the scale of human feeling. Generally, freshness has been ever kept in view; but many of the old familiar passages that live in the grateful memories of grown-up folk have been confidently reproduced for the instruction and pleasure of the rising generation. "The Globe Readers," it is hoped, will quicken and confirm the worthiest aspirations, the love of nature, and sympathy with our fellow-men. MESSRS. MACMILLAN & Co. have much pleasure in acknowledg ing the courtesy of many Authors, Publishers, and other persons, interested in the copyright extracts contained in "The Globe Readers." Their best thanks are due to the following Authors for permission to use the passages quoted over their names in the various books: Mr. William Allingham, Mr. Matthew Arnold, the Author of Our Year, Sir Samuel White Baker, Mr. William Black, Mr. Edward Capern, Mrs. Fawcett, Dr. Michael Foster, Mr. E. A. Freeman, Dr. Archibald Geikie, Mr. J. R. Green, Mr. Thomas Hughes, Q.C., Professor Huxley, Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, Misses A. and E. Keary, Dr. Charles Mackay, Rev. Hugh Macmillan, D.D., Rev. J. McMurtrie, Miss Elise Otté, Mr. W. G. Palgrave, Professor Roscoe, Miss Christina G. Rossetti, Professor Balfour Stewart, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Dr. John Yeats, and Miss Charlotte M. Yonge. Also to Messrs. Chapman and Hall for the extracts from Carlyle and Dickens ; to Messrs. Harrison for " Health in the House " by Miss Florence Nightingale; to Mr. John Heywood for "Children of the Sun," from a lecture by Professor Roscoe; to Messrs. T. Nelson and Sons for "George Stephenson" by J. H. Fyfe; to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons for "Flowers of Rivers and River-sides" by Miss Anne Pratt, and Lord Lytton's translation of Schiller's "Diver"; to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. for "The Exercise of Benevolence" by Sir Arthur Helps; to the Proprietors of the Aberdeen Herald and Weekly Free Press for "How shall I train my Sons?" to the Proprietors of the Daily News for "The Diver and his Calling," "The Cunard Line," and Isandlhwana Revisited"; and to Mr. Robert Knight for "The Military Spirit versus Industrial Development," adapted from the Statesman, 66 DIVISION OF LABOUR: Cæsar Dead - |