"The Americans ignore the political divisions of the country, and acknowledge only the divisions into the Scott country, the Burns country, the Wordsworth country, the Shakespeare country, the Dickens country, and the Lorna Doone country. We sometimes wonder where they think we come in.”

it

may

“Still,” I said, “we must remember that though be tiresome to the inhabitants to have a few associations recurring continually, a great part of the pleasure of travel consists in comparing our previous impressions with what we see. There was that most delightful of English wayfarers, George Borrow; he was doing that all the time.

"On arriving at Chester,' he says, 'at which place we intended to spend two or three days, we put up at an old-fashioned inn in Northgate Street to which we had been recommended. My wife and daughter ordered tea and its accompaniments; and I ordered ale and that which should always accompany it, cheese. "The ale I shall find bad," said I; "Chester ale had a bad reputation since the time of old Sion Tudor, who made a first-rate englyn about it, but I shall have

a treat in the cheese; Cheshire cheese has always been reckoned excellent.""

"To his great delight he found the ale as bad as it was in the days of Sion Tudor, and therefore he hilariously threw it out of the window. Then tasting the cheese, he found the cheese bad also, and promptly threw that after the ale. 'Well,' he said, 'if I have been deceived in the cheese, at any rate I have not been deceived in the ale, which I expected to find execrable. Patience! I shall not fall into a passion, more especially as there are things I can fall back upon. Wife! I will trouble you for a cup of tea. Henrietta! have the kindness to cut me a slice of bread and butter.'

"Now it is evident that Borrow had two distinct pleasures in his visit to Chester. The ale was as bad as from his previous reading of the Welsh bards he had been led to suppose, and the cheese was worse. The pleasure in each case came from the fact that his experience had reacted upon his previous ideas. After all, this is a harmless sort of pleasure."

"Yes," said the Principal, "in a bluff, wholesouled Briton like Borrow, there could be no

harm in throwing the ale and cheese around, just for the sake of auld lang syne; but it is different with a vulgar rich Am- Pardon me, I am falling into the bad habits of my pupils."

"I take no offense," I said; "you know I am not rich."

"We shall," he said, "deal tenderly with the literary and historical treasures which our pupils bring with them, but we shall endeavor to teach them to use their excellent gifts in such a way that the Past may not altogether obscure the Present."

"Another idea," said the Principal, “is that of 'the tight little island.' It is a term that the British themselves delight in; but it should be remembered that diminutives, while very endearing when used in the family circle, are less pleasing when taken up by strangers. The American expects to find the British quite insular, and so they are, of or pertaining to an island, surrounded by water, opposed to continental.' The real question is, what effect has being surrounded by water upon the mind? Is water, especially when it is salt, a conductor or non-conductor of cosmopolitan sympathies? The dictionary takes the

6

latter view and goes on to the slurring secondary definition, characteristic of the inhabitants of islands, hence, narrow, contracted.'

66

Why 'hence, narrow, contracted'? It would seem as if the dictionary-man had been consorting with land-lubbers and had taken their point of view. One would suppose from his reasoning that the sea cut one off from communication with the rest of the world, while prairies and mountains were the true highways of nations. This is not the doctrine of the Blue-water school. It is based on the recognition of the broadening effect of an insular position. There is no place so easy to get at or to get away from as an island. It makes us next-door neighbors to the ends of the earth, especially when we've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too. It is your dweller in a section of a continent who is shut in, 'hence, narrow, contracted.' Your islander knows no such narrow bounds as he sings his victorious 'Song of the Seven Seas.' If this be insularity make the most of it!"

At this moment the door-bell rang, and a shy individual appeared whom I took to be the first American student.

THE HUNDRED WORST BOOKS

SOM

OME years have passed since Sir John Lubbock offered assistance to the bewildered reader by sifting the world's literature and selecting the Best Books. Since then many lists of the Best Books, in tens and multiples of ten, have been presented to the public. Enterprising publishers have put forth sets sold by subscription and warranted to be ornaments to any library.

I am not in a position to know whether the Best Books when organized into a battalion are more resorted to than before. I suspect that, like a crack regiment, they are much admired by the commonalty, and not subjected to very hard service.

But admirable as is the effort to mark the best, it is not a sufficient method of charting the vast sea of literature. The lighthouse is not placed in the middle of the channel, but on the dangerous reef. The mournful bell-buoy tells the mariner where not to go. For purposes of instruction in