READING.

West Coast Times, Issue 2838, 8 May 1878, Page 3

READING.

Heading is a taste, a power, and a habit. The taste lias to be implanted, the power has to be imparted, and tbe habit has to be formed. Many do not read because they have never read. The powers are not one easy to acquire late in life or under difficulties ; still less easy is it to acquire the habit of digesting what one has read. But the nation has committed itself to the very great task of compelling everybody to read, and to follow up the elementary power of reading with various exercises calculated to make that reading bear substantial fruit. A nation that does this is bound to supply good books, and suitable places, and proper management for those who_n it has tanght, for confessedly it has only given them the merest of starts and barest of beginnings. It has even taken pains that in some respects this reading shall be without bias, and shall be simply an intellectnal instrument. It certainly is bound then to follow up this very humble beginning, and to give its pupils every means of completing their education. In all reason, wherever there is a school their ought to be a Free Library, in order that the scholars who have outgrown the scbojl may be able to proceed in knowledge according to their years and condition.— Times.

The Illustrated London News had on board the tug that brought home Cleopatra's Needle an artist who had shipped as a coal trimmer, there being no other means of accompanying the vessel.