The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886

The Ontario Readers: The High
School
by Ministry of
Education

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Title: The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886
Author: Ministry of Education
Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19923]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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=The Ontario Readers.=
THE HIGH SCHOOL READER.
AUTHORIZED FOR USE IN THE PUBLIC AND HIGH SCHOOLS
AND COLLEGIATE INSTITUTES OF ONTARIO BY THE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
Toronto: ROSE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1886.

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, by the MINISTER OF
EDUCATION for Ontario, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.
PRINTED AND BOUND BY HUNTER, ROSE & CO., TORONTO.

PREFACE.
The selections in the HIGH SCHOOL READER have been chosen
with the belief that to pupils of such advancement as is required for
entrance into High Schools and Collegiate Institutes, oral reading
should be taught from the best literature, inasmuch as it not only
affords a wide range of thought and sentiment, but it also demands for
its appropriate vocal interpretation such powers of sympathy and
appreciation as are developed only by culture; and it is to impart culture
that these institutions of higher learning have been established.
Experience has shown that it is from their ordinary reading books that
pupils obtain their chief practical acquaintance with literature, and the
selections here presented have been made with this in remembrance.
They have been taken from the writings of authors of acknowledged
representative character; and they have been arranged for the most part

chronologically, so that pupils may unconsciously obtain some little
insight into the history of the development of the literary art. They have
also been so chosen as to convey a somewhat fair idea of the relative
value and productivity of authorship in the three great English-speaking
communities of the world--the mother countries, our neighbours'
country, and our own.
While a limited space, if nothing else, prevents the collection here
made from being a complete anthology, yet it does pretend to represent
the authors selected in characteristic moods, and (in so far as is possible
in a school book, and a reading text-book) to present a somewhat fair
perspective of the world of authorship. It may be said that, if this be so,
some names are conspicuously absent: McGee, Canada's poet-orator;
Parkman, who has given to our country a place in the portraiture of
nations; William Morris, the chief of the modern school of romanticism;
Tyndall, who of the literature of science has made an art; Lamb,
daintiest of humorists; Collins, "whose range of flight," as Swinburne
says, "was the highest of his generation." Either from lack of space, or
from some inherent unsuitableness in such selections as might
otherwise have been made, it was found impossible to represent these
names worthily; but as they are all more or less adequately represented
in the Fourth Reader, the teacher who may wish to correct the
perspective here presented may refer his pupils to the pieces from these
authors there given. It may be added, too, that the body of recent
literature is so enormous, that no adequate representation of it (at any
rate as regards quantity) is possible within the limits of one book.
The selections in poetry, with but three necessary exceptions, are
complete wholes, and represent, as fairly as single pieces can, the
respective merits and styles of their authors. The selections in prose
cannot, of course, lay claim to this excellence; but they are all complete
in themselves, or have been made so by short introductions; and it is
hoped that they too are not unfairly representative of their authors. In
many cases they are of somewhat unusual length; by this, however,
they gain in interest and in representative character.
In some of the prose selections, passages have occasionally been

omitted, either because they interfered with the main narrative, or
because, as they added nothing to it, to omit them would be a gain of
space. In most cases these omissions are indicated by small asterisks.
All the selections, both in prose and in verse, have been made with
constant reference to their suitableness for the teaching of reading.
They are fitted to exemplify every mode of expression,