making them good citizens by making thein first good Christians, Without religion we may possibly succeed in making them decorous, if not decent, pagans; we cannot certainly hope to make them good, much less exemplary, Christians. The teachings of revelation, the facts of history, the lessons conveyed by our own daily observation and experience, and the frightful increase of vice whenever and wherever a contrary system has been adopted, all combine to confirm this conclusion. We would not exclude secular education-very far from it; but we would constantly blend with it the holy influences of religion. Christian and secular instruction should go hand in hand; they cannot be consistently or safely divorced, at least among Christians. Not that we would thrust Christian teaching on the youthful mind too frequently, or on unseasonable occasions, so as to produce a feeling of weariness or disgust. This is but too common a fault among our over-zealous, but-in this respect at least-not overwise Bible and Sabbath Christians of the day, who, but too often, in the name of religion, repress the buoyant smile of childhood, cast a gloomy shadow over the spring-tide of life, thereby infusing into the child an early, and, therefore, very deeply seated disgust for religion, and, in the end, producing an abundant harvest of indifferentists and infidels. We every day see the sad effects of this overwrought zeal and mistaken system of instruction. We would, on the contrary, seek to make religion amiable in the eyes and dear to the hearts of the little children whom Christ so dearly loved. It should gild with its light and warm with its rays every pursuit of the school-room, even as the sun enlightens and cheers the objects of nature. We would not intrude the religious influence on the mind and heart of childhood, but we would seek to distil it gently, even as God distils the dews of heaven on the tender plants of the morning. We would carefully exclude from the reading-lessons all the poison of noxious principles, and even all worldly and frivolous matter; and we would do this all the more rigidly whenever the poison would become the more dangerous, because latent, or gilded with the fascinations of style, or the gorgeous imagery of poetry. We would rigidly exclude Byron, in spite of his Syren Song. Thus im proved, secular instruction would put on new beauty and obtain a greatly increased influence for good; it would be "clothed with strength from on high," and the light of heaven would play around its pathway. It would then become doubly attractive to childhood; for the aroma of religion, diffused through all its departments, would lend it a charm and give it a zest which no earthly condiment could impart. This idea, we believe, has been carried out, to a great extent a .east, in the new Series of Metropolitan Readers just issued by the Messrs. Sadlier of New York, particularly in the Fifth Reader, to which our attention has been more specially called. The matter of the lessons is varied, and though far from being exclusively religious, possesses, in general, a religious or moral tendency, and always leaves a good impression. There is no lesson without its moral. The selection was made by a religious lady of the Order of the Holy Cross, who took care to submit her work to the judgment of gentlemen well known for their critical acumen and literary taste, and had it edited by another lady of New York, who has merited well of American Catholic literature. Under such circumstances it does not surprise us to find that the collection possesses great merit, and that it is likely to become eminently popular in our schools, and thereby to accomplish much good. The Fifth Reader is divided into two parts: the first containing the principles and practice of elocution, and the second, wellselected and appropriate readings, both in poetry and in prose. Two things in particular strike us as distinctive of this collection of readings for children: first, the preference given to American subjects and to American authors over those which are foreign; and, second, the copious selections from the writings of the principal Catholic writers of the day, both in Europe and in America. There is scarcely a prominent writer of this class from whose pen we have not at least one specimen. What renders this feature of the book the more valuable, is the circumstance that the writings of some of these distinguished authors are not very generally known or easily accessible to the mass of readers in this country. It is well that our children should learn that there are good and elegant works of literature in the Church as well as outside of it, and it is highly important that they should be imbued, from an early age, with a taste for this kind of reading. Among the foreign Catholic writers from whom selections are furnished, we no tice the names of Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Newman, Balmez, Chateaubriand, and Digby. Among our own writers, we perceive with pleasure the names of several of our archbishops, bishops, and clergymen, besides those of such distinguished laymen as Dr. Brownson, Dr. Huntington, McLeod, Shea, Miles, and others. The writings of these are interspersed with judicious selections from our standard American authors, Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, and Paulding. We take pleasure in recommending this valuable series of Readors to the patronage of our Catholic colleges, schools, and academies. |