Page images
PDF
EPUB

Says Mr. Philbrick, in one of his recent reports: "The improvement in the method of teaching music has very naturally helped the improvement of the methods of handling the other branches. As a general rule, teachers in an elementary school, who teach one branch well, teach all branches well."

The cost of musical teaching to any city or town, or to a group of towns situated as I have said, having an aggregate population of say twenty thousand inhabitants (one-fifth of whom may be reckoned to be of school age) need not exceed the sum of one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars per annum for the period I have named, and would be made up as follows:

The salary of the professional teacher,

A set of charts, with stand complete, for each school, (say for eighty schools with an average of fifty pupils each, $11.25 x 80 $900) which should last, with careful treatment, six years, $900 ÷ 6 =

[ocr errors]

Making, as above,

$1,200

=

150

$1,350

The manual for the teacher, as also the pitch-pipe, is not included in the above expense, it being supposed that each teacher would desire to purchase and possess them. And with this manual in the hands of the teacher, the charts and the blackboard, I believe that up to the age I have indicated textbooks in music may be dispensed with altogether. But if to this be added the cost of a pitch-pipe and a copy of the Teacher's Manual, (explaining the use of the charts,) for each school, the cost (on the

supposition that these, like the charts, would last by careful using six years) would be increased by twenty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents,-making a total of one thousand three hundred and seventy-six dollars and sixty-seven cents, or a trifle over thirtyfour cents for each scholar per annum.

With some such plan of easy and progressive musical instruction, and with such simple addition to the mechanism of our common school system of education, an elementary knowledge of music could be diffused throughout the land. More than this, such teaching would have its influence upon other than musical acquirements merely. It would tend, as I believe, more than any one measure as yet adopted in our public schools, to eradicate that soulless primary school tone which has passed into a proverb, to correct the prevailing habit of inadequate and defective utterance and lay the foundation for the acquirement of that nameless element in spoken language which makes up the "music of the phrase," REFINED AND EDUCATED SPEECH.

16*

English Literature,

AND

ITS PLACE IN POPULAR EDUCATION.

BY FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD.

THE prosperity of a nation comes from well-directed industry; its happiness from the impartial execution of equal laws; its greatness from the indomitable spirit of its people; but its lasting glory from its letters and art. No seats of empire have received so much of the homage of mankind as the small cities of Athens and Jerusalem. Merely commercial cities, like Tyre, Carthage, and Palmyra, are soon forgotten. Even Rome is less reverenced as the home of the Cæsars, the mother of modern states, and the source of modern civilization, than as the seat of a magnificent literature, that has enriched every language of Christendom, and is still a light to the learned world. Success in arms and the acquisition of territory give temporary renown, but after the lapse of a few centuries, everything but the great thoughts of a people perishes. Not one stone

stands upon another on the site of Persepolis, and no one can now enumerate the tribes that were subject to the Persian monarchs, or fix the limits of their empire. But the precepts of Zoroaster (the majestic contemporary of Abraham) still survive, indestructible amidst all the vicissitudes of human affairs. The history of letters refuses to be divided by the reigns of monarchs, and is measured by the appearance of great authors, as the zodiac is measured by its constellations. We speak of the age of Dante, careless of what Julius or Nicholas or Gregory might occupy the papal chair. The times of Chaucer we know; but King Edward III. is only a lay-figure, a mere accessory in the picture we imagine. The idea of Don Quixote is more real to us than Philip II.; and the time may come when the sea-fight of Lepanto will be remembered chiefly because one of Don John's victorious galleys carried as a common sailor the great Cervantes. We know that the illustrious Goethe was a counselor of state; but the monarch he served is already a shade. So, to return to English history, we speak of the age of Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare; and the name of the great Elizabeth has been made into an adjective to denote the brilliant epoch in whose glory she had no share. Milton, once the Latin secretary, outshines the great Lord Protector; stolid Queen Anne lives only in the memory of the elegant essayists of her time. Further on we trace the same intellectual lineage. Hanoverian, Georges and Williams are naught. It is the age of Scott, of Byron, and

Wordsworth, the age of Carlyle, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson.

In this country all things are so new, and political events have such an intense significance, that we do not look at affairs as posterity will look at them. But who can doubt that, when the true perspective has been adjusted, ours will be known as the age of Emerson, Irving and Hawthorne, of Bryant, Longfellow and Whittier,- of Lowell and Holmes? Who can doubt that in the next century people will say to their grand-children, “I heard Emerson in my childhood. I once saw the gracious smile of Longfellow. I have felt the electric stroke of Holmes's wit. Shall I ever forget Lowell's features, gleaming as though from an inner light, when he recited the 'Ode to the ever sweet and shining memory of the sons of Harvard that died for their country?""

The place which the study of literature should hold among other scholastic pursuits is hardly doubtful. While other studies are pursued mainly for discipline, literature is at once a means and an end of culture. Language is the most marvellous instrument of human thought, and its study employs our noblest and strongest powers, as well as our most subtile perceptions and refined tastes; and in literature, as the appropriate end of linguistic studies, we derive the highest pleasures of which our natures are capable.

Literature is a part of the world's history, and in many respects the most important part. The rise and fall of dynasties, and the changes in forms of

« PreviousContinue »