PDF - Cunningham Memorial Library

Graduated Series qf English R~adin.fJ·L~ssoll Books.
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at ansIYering the practieal purposes of n Class·Book of later English
Literature.
As the titte imports, a leading feature of the Graduated Series is
the graduation of the difficulty of tho lessous. This feature clnrac·
tcrises, indcl'd, in n greater or less deg-rec, nll school reading..1.>ooks
which have any pretensions to the name. llut: the novelty of tlIe
present project is, that it seeks to carry out the idea of gradun tian
morc thoroughly, and to base it on a lUorc philosophical foundation
than exi5tin~ works of the same kind have attempted to do. It has
hitherto been the practice to graduate reading-lessons, almost exclusively,
either accordin~ to the complexity of the grammatical con·
structions, or according to the tlifficulty of- the words which occur in
them. This practice has resulted from a too limiteU view of what
the term reading should imply. A lesson cannot be said to be pro·
perly 'read unless it is fully compl"ehcndecl; and it olJViously by no
means follows that n lesson is easy of comprehension because it CX~
hibits n scarcity of unusual words and constructions. .A. sentence
which may be ulleredand grammaticnlly analysed witb great faeilitr,
may present a very hard problem to the intellect. This is a conside~
ration of the utmost consequence. In graduating the lessons of the
present series, the Edrtor has had reference, not only to their verbal
and ~rammaticalpeculiarities, but also to the general calibre of mind
requisite to untlerstand and appreciate the ideas which they express.
As to the subject-mntter he has beeuguided by no nrbitrary staudard,
hut by n wish to pl'ese~ttojuvenile readers that kind of iutellectual
food which experience has declared to lJe suitable for the various stages
ofgrowth to which the volumes separately address themselves.
nIost of the present reading.lessons either consist of plain campen·
dious outlines of some of the departments of art and the branclles of
natural science, or they abound in abstract essays and rhetorical or
poetical common.placcs. 'Yith reference to the former, the distinction
between general information and special instruCtion in matters
of fact, which is of a purely didnctic nature, has not hitherto beeu
stendily kept iu view. It hns been too ofteu forgotten that the earn·
munication of this sort of knowledge, howe,'er useful it rna}" be, is
secondary in importance"to the cultivation ofa taste for reading, and
to the training of the pmver and the habit of independent thinking
and obsel','ation. But it is beginning to be recognised, that one of
the most infallible ways of creating a distaste for inquiry into the
construction and phenomena of the material unh~erse, is to burden
the mind with a mass of technieal facts; that such facts nre not ne.
London: LONGMAN, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Row.