minutes, I was in my seat, on a back form, looking about me and meditating. A little girl, of whom I recollect absolutely nothing but her downy little arms and her naked neck and shoulders, sat a bench or two away from me. In some way she offended the old dame, who had been so very gentle to me-for really she had been most benignantand so Madam, with the wooden busk of a pair of stays, which was her striking implement, hit out at the little girl. When the busk went back, there was a well-pronounced, broad red mark on the little girl's white neck. But my face must have instantly become a great deal more red. I could have made a dash at the victim there and then, smothered her with caresses, and then murdered the old woman. It was not to be. Impatiently I sat till school broke up. I felt sullen with my mother for punishing me unjustly, and did not feel bound to go home immediately. I had been sent out, and I would keep out. With a beating heart-ah! how well I remember the throbbing in my ears-I went up to the little girl and, I forget how, made friends with her. I took hold of her little pink hand, and we went down the street together towards the fields, and away from my home. As we passed along, I met a "gentleman" whom I had seen speaking to my father. He smiled down upon me, and said,— "Well, my little man!" "No, sir," said I: "I'm not a man; but I'm going on to be one." He half laughed, and gave me a penny ! Now I had been always told not to take money, and was very shy of doing so. But I was away from home-had some sense of having been injured-and felt all the moral latitude of a belligerent. So I took the money, and bought with it two monstrous yellow bull's eyes. I felt more pleasure myself in their transparent golden brightness and the pleasing oval of their shape, than I could possibly find in their flavour, and tried hard to get my companion to take both and eat them. I would have laid all the bull's eyes in the world at her feet! She would not accept both, and sucking the bull's eyes, we walked till we came to a hedge on the margin of the pond. Then I made her sit down, and we talked. She had nothing whatever on over her low-necked frock, and, at some moment of interest in our conversation, I seized her round the waist, put my lips to the shoulder that had had the busk, and kissed it like mad. She burst out crying, and got up. I was frightened, and stood up also, trembling from head to foot. Then I became suddenly aware of that change in the sunshine which tells you it is distinctly afternoon; and I felt some remorse at staying away from my mother so long. We turned hurriedly homewards, and, at some point on the road, the little girl darted away, without warning or farewell, and left me to the blankness of my own sensations. н н 2 When I got home, I found my father with two other men (who were to be our lodgers) and in high good humour. My mother was looking black. There was some cold boiled mutton-I remember the exact veining of the white fat in it-left out for my dinner. "Well," said my father laughing-he often laughed, to the great scandal of my mother, when I had done anything "rampagious "— "where have you been, and what did you learn at school?" At this, the cloud on my mother's brow dispersed; and she joined my father in a loud, long laugh. "Why, he can read better than she can!" explained my father to the two guests. Then my mother required an account of my time since school broke up, and I gave it, omitting nothing. Now, indeed, the laughter became Homeric, or Thor-like, or what you will; and all the years I happened afterwards to know these two men I was teased about "that young woman, behind the hedge, you know." IX. But how was it that I could read as well as my schoolmistress, and yet had had but little direct teaching? The first thing I will do in going into this question, and some related matters, is to ask attention to some abbreviated passages from Mr. MacDonald's "Gutta-Percha Willie" : "Hector had shown considerable surprise when he found that Willie could not read. "What a fine thing it would be to learn to read to Hector! It would be such fun to surprise him too, by all at once reading him something! "The sun was not at his full height when Willie received this illumination. Before the sun went down, he knew, and could read at sight, at least a dozen words. "For the moment he saw that he ought to learn to read, he ran to his mother, and asked her to teach him. She was delighted, for she had begun to be a little doubtful whether his father's plan of leaving him alone till he wanted to learn was the right one. But at that precise moment she was too busy with something that must be done for his father, to lay it down and begin teaching him his letters. Willie was so eager to learn, however, that he could not rest without doing something towards it. He bethought himself a little-and then ran and got Dr. Watts's hymns for children. He knew 'How doth the little busy bee' so well as to be able to repeat it without a mistake, for his mother had taught it him, and he had understood it. You see he was not like a child of five, taught to repeat by rote lines which could give him no notions but mistaken ones. Besides, he had a good knowledge of words, and could use them well in talk although he could not read; and it is a great thing if a child can talk well before he begins to learn to read. "He opened the little book at the Busy Bee, and knowing already enough to be able to divide the words the one from the other, he said to himself— "The first word must be How. There it is, with a gap between it and the next word. I will look and see if I can find another How anywhere.' "He looked a long time before he found one; for the capital H was in the way. Of course there was a good many hows, but not many with a big H, and he didn't know that the little h was just as good for the mere word. Then he looked for doth, and he found several doths. Of thes, he found as great a swarm as if they had been the bees themselves with which the little song was concerned. Busy was scarce; I am not sure whether he found it at all; but he looked at it until he was pretty sure he should know it again when he saw it. After he had gone over in this way every word of the first verse, he tried himself, by putting his finger at random here and there upon it and seeing whether he could tell the word it happened to touch. Sometimes he could, and sometimes he couldn't. However, as I said, before the day was over, he knew at least a dozen words perfectly well at sight. "Nor let any one think this was other than a great step in the direction of reading! It would be easy for Willie afterwards to break up these words into letters. "It took him two days more-for during part of each he was learning to make shoes-to learn to know anywhere, every word he had found in that hymn. "Next he took a hymn he had not learned and applied to his mother when he came to a word he did not know, which was very often. As soon as she told him one, he hunted about until he found another and another specimen of the same, and so went on until he had fixed it quite in his mind. "At length he began to compare words that were like each other, and by discovering wherein they looked the same, and wherein they looked different, he learned something of the sound of the letters. For instance, in comparing the and these, although the one sound of the two letters, t and h, puzzled him, and likewise the silent e, he conjectured that the s must stand for the hissing sound; and when he looked at other words which had that sound, and perceived an s in every one of them, then he was sure of it. His mother had no idea how fast he was learning, and when about a fortnight after he had begun, she was able to take him in hand, she found, to her astonishment, that he could read a great many words, but that, when she wished him to spell one, he had not the least notion what she meant.” 470 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IRRECONCILEABLE. The extreme interest of this passage must be my apology for the length of the extract. The remainder of the story is to be found in "Good Words for the Young." It will be seen that we have here glimpses of the art of learning to read without learning to spell; but Mr. MacDonald does not disclose (probably for good artistic reasons) that he is aware of the whole scope of that indirect criticism on educational method which is involved in Willie's method of learning to read. We will try, however, to go some little way towards developing it. AN IRRECONCILEABLE. (To be continued.) THE SONG OF ALTABISKAR. [The following lines are a version of an Euskaldung or Basque popular ballad of unascertained date, which records the mythical fight of Roncesvalles, where the peers of Charlemagne, and notably Roland and Oliver, fell; as seen from the victors' point of view. The original will be found in M. Francisque-Michel's Le Pays Basque, p. 236.] AMIDST the mountains of the Basques a sudden cry sounds clear, He calls, "Who goes there-need they me?" while at his feet the hound Springs up from sleep, and baying loud, wakes Altabiskar round. From Ibañeta's ridge a noise is echoing, heard on high, The sullen murmur of a host advancing through the land, Who make their signals widely heard with horn and bugle call ; They come! they come! what clumps of spears, what banners floating free Of many a hue rise on the view as rides their chivalry! How bright the flashes come and go from off their coats of mail! How many be they? Count them o'er, and tell, my child, the tale. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, a score, are seen. A score! yes, more, and thousands o'er; 'twere wasted time to count. Uproot we with our sinewy arms the rocks upon the mount, And hurl them from the dizzy height down to the pass below, |