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Books on the English Language, and on language in general deserve a passing notice in this place inasmuch as reading on these subjects comes legitimately within the scope of the general title of this chapter. The number of school grammars is well nigh boundless, and among them there is a great variety in respect of excellence. Of Philosophical Grammars of the English language there is a lamentable deficiency. It is in the German language only that we find those which are at all satisfactory and truly scientific. The works of R. G. Latham, and the grammar of W. C. Fowler are perhaps the best. George P. Marsh's Lectures on the English Language and Origin and History of the English Language, stand prominent as treatises adopted for general reading. R. C. Trench On the Study of Words, English Past and Present, and Select Glossary of English Words are instructive and popular books. W. Swinton's Rambles among Words, and Schele De Vere's Studies in English are books which excite and gratify curiosity. The attention which has everywhere been given to the study of Anglo-Saxon and of the early English, promises to yield large contributions to this class of works.

In General Philology, which is a subject that interests very many general readers, the following books may be named: Max Müller's Lectures on Language, Chips from a German Workshop, W. D. Whitney's Language and the Study of Language, F. W. Farrar On the Origin of Language, B. W. Dwight's Modern Philology, and J. Stoddart's Glossology. The study of words in their general aspects and of language is very nearly akin to literary criticism, and careful and critical attention to the style of the authors we read, is itself a most important means of culture, as well as a source of high enjoyment. For this reason such works as Dean Alford's The Queen's English, C. W. Moon's Bad English and the Dean's English, and E. S. Gould's Good English are well worth reading. The

habit of consulting an English Dictionary in reading is not maintained as commonly as it should be by intelligent persons. No single habit is at once so eminently the cause and the indication of careful attention to the language which we use, and an efficient training to the best kind of culture. It involves daily and hourly criticism of the use of an instrument which cannot be correctly and felicitously applied without accurate and careful thinking and active and refined sensibility.

CHAPTER XIX.

BOOKS OF SCIENCE AND DUTY.

PHILOSOPHICAL and ethical reading next claim our attention, and those books which aim to enlarge or confirm our convictions of Truth or to convince and incite us with respect to Duty. We use the words philosophical and ethical in a very liberal sense— -to define all those works whether longer or shorter, whether graver or less serious, which have for their direct object conviction or action in the light of permanent principles, in contradistinction from those books which narrate facts or address the imagination. We do not include Theological and Religious reading, but reserve these for a separate chapter. We exclude all books and reading in technical or special science, because our design contemplates only a general course of reading, and because, for obvious reasons, the teachers and manuals of the several sciences may be relied on to direct to courses of special and technical study.

We begin with the sciences of Nature, i. e., physical nature for we hold that the universe of Nature includes the spiritual as truly as the material, and that it is inaccurate to restrict the word nature to matter, whether it be hard matter or soft matter, whether it be solid and fixed as adamant or as impalpable and evanescent as the most diffused and diffusible of the gases. Most of the books upon these sciences which are of the highest authority are necessarily technical. They require careful study and exact knowledge. Of these standard treatises there is a very large number, and they are constantly displacing one

another, with the very progress of science itself. A few books only come within the range and scope of our discussion, but these few should not be omitted. For the general reader Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos is the best single book which gives what was known concerning the physical universe or was regarded as established by scientific methods and scientific evidence, at the time when the illustrious author finished the work which was SO splendid a finale to his laborious life. This work is very concisely written and is often abstract and technical, but it will well repay slow and careful reading. The History of the progress of the sciences of nature, to the man of philosophical tastes is in the highest degree exciting and instructive, especially when followed in the more recent stages of their rapid and brilliant development. William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences from the earliest to the present time, is the best if not the only compendious work upon this general topic which is accessible. It meets all the wants of the general reader up to the time when it was written. J. F. W. Herschell's Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, is a clear and popular position of the methods of studying nature and of the grounds of our confidence in the processes of induction. W. Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, afterwards re-wrought and published under the title of History of Scientific Ideas, etc., is much more ambitiously metaphysical and entirely beyond the reach of the general reader. John Stuart Mill's System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, treats in Book Third of the processes and laws of induction, more carefully and exhaustively than any other work. The defective philosophical system taught in it diminishes very little from its practical value. The substance of Mill's work may be found in abridgements, as W. Stebbing's Analysis of Mill's Logic, and T. Fowler's Elements of Inductive Logic. L. Agassiz's Essay on Classifi

cation is a treatise often referred to in respect to the philosophy of the inductive processes. His Methods of Study in Natural History, and Geological Sketches are at once popular and scientific. Arnold Guyot's Earth and Man comes within our rule, for though it treats in special of physical geography it discusses it very largely in its general relations to the history and development of the race. Many of the writings of the lamented Hugh Miller are very attractive to the unscientific reader, even when they are strictly technical, for the interest with which they invest physical research and the light they throw upon its processes. The same is true of many of the writings of Sir Humphrey Davy, Sir Charles Bell, of Richard Owen, Michael Faraday, and J. F. Tyndall. It is to be borne in mind that the press is literally oppressed by the number of superficial books in which the attempt is made to popularize science and to set forth its relations to the imagination and to faith. To uninstructed minds and to those who have only a smattering of knowledge many of these writings are attractive just in proportion to their superficialness and pretension. The style in which they are written is often vicious and inflated, and overloaded with tawdry ornaments. It is not wise either to trust the science taught in such books or to follow the imaginative flights to which they would exalt and inspire, unless their authors are known among scientific men to be men of requisite knowledge and of sound judgment. Although the physical sciences are in their nature severe and in their requisitions exacting, they afford the amplest room for all grades of sciolists and pretenders as well as the widest range for every species of imaginative romancing. Science run mad is the maddest and the most uncontrollable of all forms of madness, as the steadiest and most trustworthy of horses is the most stiff-headed and unmanageable when he goes off in a fright or indulges in an escapade. It is a safe

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