COURSE OF ELEMENTARY READING IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE, COMPILED FROM POPULAR WRITERS, FOR THE USE OF CIRCUS-PLACE SCHOOL; TO WHICH IS ADDED, A COPIOUS LIST OF THE LATIN AND GREEK PRIMITIVES WHICH ENTER INTO THE BY J. M. M'CULLOCH, A.M. HEAD MASTER OF CIRCUS-PLACE SCHOOL. THEC EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR OLIVER & BOYD, TWEEDDALE-COURT; AND GEO. B. WHITTAKER, LONDON. 1827. BODLE ADVERTISEMENT. THE following pages have been compiled under the impression, that a class-book for an initiatory school should consist of lessons on useful subjects rather than of rhetorical passages. Such passages, however admirable as exercises in elocution for those who are already possessed of a considerable degree of intelligence and taste, cannot be perused with advantage by juvenile readers until a course of previous training has prepared them to understand their meaning and appreciate their beauties. Elocution is no doubt an essential branch of a polite education; but it bears no higher relation to general knowledge, than gilding bears to gold, or an accomplishment to an essential qualification; and nothing can be more unreasonable than the prejudice which subjects children to an attempt to make them fine readers before any effort has been made to exercise their mental powers."Good reading," says a competent judge,* *can never precede the exercise of understanding, or be attained without a stock of information ;" and it seems evident * Poole-Essay on Education. |