Touching on many interests shows us our ignorance.  I have known schoolgirls, who were kept to their lessons, Algebra and Latin and periods of History, and who thought they knew a good deal, because they measured by a schoolroom standard.  When they came in contact with the number of things that cultivated people of society care for and appreciate, they learnt a good deal of humility.  Certainly the more I read on general subjects the more I feel my own ignorance, and I think it would be very odd if it did not have the same effect on you.

The next reason for this sort of lesson, and one of the best, is that it ought to raise our taste.  It is not enough to like or dislike a book:  we ought to train ourselves to like the best books.  We do not think ourselves born judges in music or art; we submit to being trained before we think our opinion worth giving.  It would be just so with a book, but you often hear girls quite sorry for the author if they find a book dull; they feel he is to blame!  When I find an author dull, whom good critics admire, I feel pretty sure that I am deficient on that point, and I try to learn to see in him what they do.  I speak from experience; when I found Wordsworth dull, I knew it was my own fault, and I read and re-read him, and listened to those who could appreciate him, and now I am rewarded by his being a real part of the pleasures of my life.  We need not leave off liking the merely pretty writers, such as Miss Procter and Longfellow.  I love Longfellow and admire Miss Procter, but I cared for them both quite as much when I was seven, and an author who can be in some measure appreciated at seven ought to give way to deeper authors by-and-by.  Like Guinevere, it is our duty “to love the highest.”  The great good of cultivated homes is that we learn to “put away childish things” and to admire the better things which we hear talked of.  Some of you may not have this advantage; your people may be too busy for talking about books and such things, and some of you may be cut off from interesting talks by having school lessons to prepare when you would like to listen.  Therefore, I should like you to get some talk in school on such subjects—­to spend some “Half-hours with the best Authors.”

Holidays.

“Where shall we spend the holidays?” has doubtless been discussed in many households, by both parents and children,—­I wonder if the children followed it up by a still more important question, “How shall I spend the holidays?” Just at the close of a term you will not want me to suggest anything that is like lessons, but at the same time I do not see why you should spend seven weeks in idleness and novel-reading, any more than you would live for seven weeks on puddings and sweets.  You like plenty of sweets, and I hope you will get them, but I hope you will have meat as well!