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PROSE AND POETICAL READER

BEING A COLLECTION OF

SELECT SPECIMENS IN ENGLISH

WITH

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUESTIONS ON EACH LESSON

TO WHICH ARE APPENDED

LISTS OF PREFIXES AND AFFIXES

WITH

AN ETYMOLOGICAL VOCABULARY

BY

ALEXANDER WINTON BUCHAN, F.E.I.S.

TEACHER, GLASGOW

SECOND EDITION

EDINBURGH

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE

MDCCCLIX

270.c.64.

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PREFACE.

In our prefatory remarks we shall endeavour to point out the distinctive features of this book, and to explain the manner in which we think it should be used, leaving it to teachers and the public generally to judge whether its claims of being an improvement on the English school collections at present in use be well or ill founded.

In regard to the prose lessons, it will be seen that they embrace a great variety of subjects, and are selected both on account of the elegancy and liveliness of the style in which they are written, and of the interesting nature of the information they contain. In books of this class it has been popular of late years to present the scholar with summaries of sacred and of profane history,-and with short but connected, although necessarily very meagre, views of some branches of science, illustrated with a few diagrams. In our experience as a teacher we have found such books not well adapted for teaching young persons to read fluently and elegantly, or to inspire them with a love of reading by themselves. But without referring particularly to our experience in teaching, a moment's reflection on the nature of the human mind will show that this must be the The powers of the mind come into operation gradually, and in invariable order; and, at the age of eleven or twelve years, the fancy and the affections are more particularly active; but the dry language in which scientific truth is often conveyed, with page after page of history, in which names and dates are for the most part the only things ever meeting the eye, are neither suited to charm the one nor to engage the other. "It is no wisdom" says Dr Arnold, "to make boys prodigies of information; but it is our wisdom and our duty to cultivate their faculties each in its season-first the memory and imagination, and then the judgment; to furnish them with the means, and to excite the desire of improving themselves, and to wait with confidence for God's blessing on the result."

case.

600082838Z

PROSE AND POETICAL READER

BEING A COLLECTION OF

SELECT SPECIMENS IN ENGLISH

WITH

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUESTIONS ON EACH LESSON

TO WHICH ARE APPENDED

LISTS OF PREFIXES AND AFFIXES

WITH

AN ETYMOLOGICAL VOCABULARY

BY

ALEXANDER WINTON BUCHAN, F.E.I.S.

TEACHER, GLASGOW

SECOND EDITION

EDINBURGH

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE

MDCCCLIX

270.c.64.

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