A Girl’s Reading.

New Zealand Mail, 22 April 1887, Page 5

A Girl’s Reading.

We all know-Charles Lamb’s views on the subject of early reading, as expressed in his triumphant vindication of Bridget Elia’s happily neglected education. ‘She was tumbled by accident or design into a spacious closet of good old English books, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that- fair and wholesome pasturage Had I 20 girls they should be brought up exactly in this fashion.’ ‘lt is natural that but few parents are anxious to risk so hazardous an experiment,’says Agnes Kepplier in the January Atlantic, especially as the training of * incomparable old maids ’ .is hardly the recognised summit of maternal ambition ; hut Bridget Elia at least ran no danger of intellectual starvation, while, if we pursue a modern school girl along the track of her self-chosen reading, we shall be astonished that so much printed matter can yield so little mental nourishment. She lias begun, no doubt, with childish stories, bright and well written, probably, hut following each other in such quick succession that none of them have left any distinct impression on her mind. Books that children read but once are of scaut service to them ; those -that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few -old friends we kaow so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves. At 10 or 12 tne little girl aspires to something partly grown up—to those nondescript tales which, trembling ever on the brink of sentiment, seem afraid to- risk the plunge; and with her appetite whetted by a course of this unsatisfying diet, she is soon ripe for a little more excitement and a great deal more love, so graduates into Rhoda Broughton and the ‘Duchess,’ at which point her intellectual career is closed. She has no idea, ■even, of what she has missed in the world of books. She tells you that sbe ‘ don t care for Dickens,’ and ‘ can’t get interested in Scott,’with a placidity that plainly shows she lays the blame for this state of affairs on the two great masters who have amused and charmed the world. As for ‘Northanger Abbey ’ or * Emma,’ she would as soon think of finding entertainment in ‘ Henry Esmond.’ She has, probably, never read a single masterpiece of our language; she has never been moved by a noble poem, or stirred to the quick by a well-told page of history ; she has never opened the pores of her mind for the reception of a vigorous thought, or the solution of a mental problem ; yet she may be found daily in the circulating library, and is seldom visible in the street without a book or two under her arm.