almost verbatim for a lifetime, by equally stupid and slovenly writers. You can find them in geographies, histories, story books, newspapers-in fact, everywhere. It is well known that Tecumtha was not at the battle or near it, or in any way responsible for it; that Harrison was not at that time a General, but the Governor; that he was not the aggressor; that so far from leading to an immediate and lasting peace, the battle of Tippecanoe was the very first of a long chain of horrible butcheries or heroic defenses, attacks and massacres.

For at least two years the power of the savages was not broken, nor was the war ended. And yet so stupid can people become by text-book worship that they will tell the story of the whole war, and conclude by remarking that the first battle led to an immediate and lasting peace.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

MATTIE CURL DENNIS.

"I love the old melodious lays

Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spencer's golden days,

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew."

SCHLEGEL says that a nation which allows her language to degenerate is parting with the best half of her intellectual independence, and testifies her willingness to cease to exist; again, it has been said, "if a nation's language becomes rude and barbarous, the nation must be on the brink of barbarism in regard to everything else."

So important is the language and the literature of a people, not only as a symbol of their present attainments, but as a means of their future progress, that it is impossible for the individual to exert any worthy degree of influence upon the intellectual culture of the age who is not more or less exhaustively acquainted with the history and development of his own language and literature.

In the "Reading Circle," we have traced the growth of our literature from its formative state until it was organized by

Chaucer into a living language; again, we see it losing its beauty and power until it almost ceased to be a literary tongue amid the intellectual dearth of the following century-and-a-half; but in spite of the trickster rhymers and dilute imitators of Chaucer, that spanned this interval, English literature was still kept from going out of existence by the poetry of Hawes and Skelton, and by the prose of More. Hawes was simply an imitator; but Skelton was an educated man, possessed of native wit and originality, and in his poems, "Why come ye not to Court," a satire against Woolsey, and "Colen Clout," a representation of the indignation of the common people against church abuses, he exhibits marks of genius, and institutes the germ of that cumulative opposition to political and ecclesiastical tyranny which terminated in the Reformation. Skelton died in 1529, during the reign of Henry VIII, and is the last true representative in England that marks the decadence of Chaucerian influence and the rise of that new Italian influence that became a part of the power which the New Learning was to exert in the field of English letters.

The effect of the New Learning began to tell upon the literature of the English people through the poetry of Wyatt and Surry; they were educated, and by an extensive tour in Italy had become acquainted with the Italian models in literature. A new standard of literature was now introduced into England under the revival influence of the classics. Taine says that in the Earl of Surry for the first time "English intellect became capable of self-criticism." Surry, like Petrarch and Dante, sang of love; but, above and more beautiful than the cold Platonicism which invests his Geraldine is that immensely human English love which paints,

"A woman not too fair or good

For human nature's daily food."

The poetry of Surry really ushered in the great Elizabethan Age: doubtless many and varied were the causes that produced this age; the revival of the classics did much; comparative political and domestic security with an added degree of wealth and consequent leisure, perhaps did more; greater personal liberty, larger hopes, and nobler aspirations were opening up to men who

began to seek fame and preferment in other than bloody fields. Not that Englishmen were just now beginning their education; three generations of scholars had thronged the English Court and Universities. "Across the train of hooded schoolmen and sordid cavaliers the two adult and thinking ages were united," the gloom which had crushed human sympathy and stunted the intellect of the Middle Ages now gave place to the worship of the gods of Olympus, and passion so long dwarfed ran riot in this new freedom.

This great upheaval of the old life into the new awoke into nobler rythm within the years of the Pagan Renaissance: literature like everything else grew, and the preceding ages with ax and gibbet and tower and fire had not been in vain we could no more have done without the enthusiasm that fought the Crusades, and the chivalry that established the "Round Table," than could the coming ages afford to blot out the metaphysical sermon in "In Memoriam," or forget the deathless passion of "Mary in Heaven."

Our intellectual inheritance from the past became in the hands of genius "New Memnons," clothed with the inspiration of a "grander day."

Italy led the way in the revival of letters as she had done in painting; but on English soil, it became a sterner, more practical kind of literature, the offspring of colder and more logical skies, a kind of prelude to

"I am the poet of Whitehorse vale, sir,

With liberal notions under my cap."

Among the first and noblest of the great literary characters that graced this age of noted writers was the accomplished, cultured Sir Philip Sidney: he marks the last milestone in the decadence of literary chivalry; and with him died ancient knighthood. He it was that followed the Euphuism that had been introduced into courtly circles by the writings of Toyly, and did much to put down the far-fetched mannerisms and overloaded expressions which had become so popular in courtly circles through the "Euphues."

Sidney, like Cowper, wrote because it pleased him to do so,

seemingly regardless of praise or censure: he is best known through his "Arcadia" and his "Defense of Poesy"; but, if we were seeking a work of pure art, where beauty of expression is combined with the chivalrous graces and refined elegancies of the most appropriate diction, I know of nothing in our language that would more properly emphasize these qualities than Sidney's letter to Queen Elizabeth, in which he sets forth the reasons why it would be neither wise nor politic, either for herself or for the English people, that she should marry Philip of Anjou.

Sidney's Arcadia is a kind of pastoral epic, a combination of prose and poetry written at Wilton, the home of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke; here he had withdrawn from the Court of Elizabeth on account of a difficulty he had become involved in with the Earl of Oxford; in this temporary banishment he beguiled "the time's haste" in the composition of this pleasing

romance.

Hazlett and Walpole have severely criticised this production; but notwithstanding its ornate style, the excrescences and flat humor that mar its pages, these were some of the very things that in those days were causes of the admiration then bestowed upon it, and it still remains a model of the customs of the times, and it will continue to be read, appreciated and admired by the lovers of antique beauties in literary art.

The Defense of Poesy is the first literary critique in our language. It was written in answer, perhaps, to Stephen Gascon's School of Abuse, in which poetry and plays were attacked from the Puritan standpoint: in it Sidney holds that the pleasure derived from imaginative literature is an incentive "both to the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue." The style is argumentative throughout; he seems to be master of his resources, and trusts in the vigor of his own convictions to produce evidence in the minds of his readers; he argues that "men are most readily approached through the imagination, and that impressions so received are most lasting." In proof of this power of poetry over his own mind he says: "I never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with the sound of a trumpet."

In his Astrophel and Stella, which consists of about 150 songs and sonnets, he celebrates his love for "the woman who became the wife of Lord Rich," and to whom Sidney was once engaged. The Pamela of the "Arcadia" and the Stella of the Sonnets is said to refer to the same individual. The Sonnets have been subjected to much criticism adverse and otherwise, both as to the matter and manner of their composition; Sidney was not an elegant verse-writer, though in his Address to Sleep and in a number of his sonnets to "Stella" we may find real poetic genius. As to the subject matter we must remember that he modeled after Dante and Petrarch in celebrating his love for Stella; that in those elder days it was no uncommon thing for poets to sing their loves, either married or unmarried. Taine claims that like "Beatrice" and "Sara," "Stella" was simply an inspiration that refined Sidney's genius and gave him the embodiment of that diviner love which is a part of immortality.

Sidney was born at Penhurst, the home of his illustrious ancestors, where grew—

"That taller tree of which a nut was set

At his great birth where all the muses met."

He fell in the battle of Zutphen in 1586, in the struggle of the Protestants of the Netherlands against the Catholics.

十

FORMS AND METHODS IN ARITHMETIC-II.

D.

W. F. L. SANDERS, SUPT. CAMBRIDGE CITY SCHOOLS.

8. At the proper stage of advancement of the class, let the teacher further illustrate this method of work with an example similar to this

Ex. How many square feet in the surface of a floor 14 ft. wide and 25 ft. long?

First, show on the black-board that there will be a row of 25 square feet along the length, and that there will be 14 such rows, or 14 times 25 square feet, which gives 350 sq ft. In this way is developed the general practical formula

LENGTH X BREADTH = SURFACE,

which the teacher should place on the black-board.

He should