How to Do It Part 5

Half the boys and girls who read this have been so well trained that they know. They know what they want to know. One is sure that she wants to know more about Mary Queen of Scots; another, that he wants to know more about fly-fishing; another, that she wants to know more about the Egyptian hieroglyphics; another, that he wants to know more about propagating new varieties of pansies; another, that she wants to know more about "The Ring and the Book"; another, that he wants to know more about the "Tenure of Office bill" Happy is this half. To know your ignorance is the great first step to its relief. To confess it, as has been said before, is the second.

In a minute I will be ready to say what I can to this happy half; but one minute first for the less happy half, who know they want to read something because it is so nice to read a pleasant book, but who do not know what that something is. They come to us, as their ancestors came to a relative of mine who was librarian of a town library sixty years ago: "Please, sir, mother wants a sermon book, and another book."

To these undecided ones I simply say, now has the time come for decision.

Your school studies have undoubtedly opened up so many subjects to you that you very naturally find it hard to select between them. Shall you keep up your drawing, or your music, or your history, or your botany, or your chemistry? Very well in the schools, my dear Alice, to have started you in these things, but now you are coming to be a woman, it is for you to decide which shall go forward; it is not for Miss Winstanley, far less for me, who never saw your face, and know nothing of what you can or cannot do.

Now you can decide in this way. Tell me, or tell yourself, what is the pa.s.sage in your reading or in your life for the last week which rests on your memory. Let us see if we thoroughly understand that pa.s.sage. If we do not, we will see if we cannot learn to. That will give us a "course of reading" for the next twelve months, or if we choose, for the rest of our lives. There is no end, you will see, to a true course of reading; and, on the other hand, you may about as well begin at one place as another.

Remember that you have infinite lives before you, so you need not hurry in the details for fear the work should be never done.

Now I must show you how to go to work, by supposing you have been interested in some particular pa.s.sage. Let us take a pa.s.sage from Macaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh Review for Sydney to speak, twenty-nine years ago,--I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's name. A great many of you boys have spoken it at school since then, and many of you girls have heard sc.r.a.ps from it. It is a brilliant pa.s.sage, rather too ornate for daily food, but not amiss for a luxury, more than candied orange is after a state dinner. He is speaking of the worldly wisdom and skilful human policy of the method of organization of the Roman Catholic Church. He says:--

"The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other inst.i.tution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The Republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the Republic of Venice was modern when compared to the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine; and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila....

"She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had pa.s.sed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."

I. We will not begin by considering the wisdom or the mistake of the general opinion here laid down. We will begin by trying to make out what is the real meaning of the leading words employed. Look carefully along the sentence, and see if you are quite sure of what is meant by such terms as "The Roman Catholic Church," "the Pantheon," "the Flavian amphitheatre," "the Supreme Pontiffs," "the Pope who crowned Napoleon,"

"the Pope who crowned Pepin," "the Republic of Venice," "the missionaries who landed in Kent," "Augustine," "the Saxon had set foot in Britain,"

"the Frank had pa.s.sed the Rhine," "Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch," "idols in Mecca," "New Zealand," "London Bridge," "St. Paul's."

For really working up a subject--and this sentence now is to be our subject--I advise a blank book, and, for my part, I like to write down the key words or questions, in a vertical line, quite far apart from each other, on the first pages. You will see why, if you will read on.

II. Now go to work on this list. What do you really know about the organization of the Roman Catholic Church? If you find you are vague about it, that such knowledge as you have is only half knowledge, which is no knowledge, read till you are clear. Much information is not necessary, but good, as far as it goes, is necessary on any subject. This is a controverted subject. You ought to try, therefore, to read some statement by a Catholic author, and some statement by a Protestant. To find out what to read on this or any subject, there are different clews.

1. Any encyclopaedia, good or bad, will set you on the trail. Most of you have or can have an encyclopaedia at command. There are one-volume encyclopaedias better than nothing, which are very cheap. You can pick up an edition of the old Encyclopaedia Americana, in twelve volumes, for ten or twelve dollars. Or you can buy Appleton's, which is really quite good, for sixty dollars a set. I do not mean to have you rest on any encyclopaedia, but you will find one at the start an excellent guide-post.

Suppose you have the old Encyclopaedia Americana. You will find there that the "Roman Catholic Church" is treated by two writers,--one a Protestant, and one a Catholic. Read both, and note in your book such allusions as interest you, which you want more light upon. Do not note everything which you do not know, for then you cannot get forward. But note all that specially interests you. For instance, it seems that the Roman Catholic Church is not so called by that church itself. The officers of that church might call it the Roman church, or the Catholic church, but would not call it the Roman Catholic church. At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal Consalvi objected to the joint use of the words Roman Catholic church. Do you know what the Congress of Vienna was? No? then make a memorandum, if you want to know. We might put in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a man, who had a father and mother, perhaps brothers and sisters. He will give us a little human interest, if we stop to look him up. But do not stop for him now. Work through "Roman Catholic Church," and keep these memoranda in your book for another day.

2. Quite different from the encyclopaedia is another book of reference, "Poole's Index." This is a general index to seventy-three magazines and reviews, which were published between the years 1802 and 1852. Now a great deal of the best work of this century has been put into such journals. A reference, then, to "Poole's Index" is a reference to some of the best separate papers on the subjects which for fifty years had most interest for the world of reading men and women. Let us try "Poole's Index" on "The Republic of Venice." There are references to articles on Venice in the New England Magazine, in the Pamphleteer, in the Monthly Review, Edinburgh, Quarterly, Westminster, and De Bow's Reviews. Copy all these references carefully, if you have any chance at any time of access to any of these journals. It is not, you know, at all necessary to have them in the house. Probably there is some friend's collection or public library where you can find one or more of them. If you live in or near Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia, or Charleston, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, or Chicago, or St. Louis, or Ithaca, you can find every one.

When you have carefully gone down this original list, and made your memoranda for it, you are prepared to work out these memoranda. You begin now to see how many there are. You must be guided, of course, in your reading, by the time you have, and by the opportunity for getting the books. But, aside from that, you may choose what you like best, for a beginning. To make this simple by an ill.u.s.tration, I will suppose you have been using the old Encyclopaedia Americana, or Appleton's Cyclopaedia and Poole's Index only, for your first list. As I should draw it up, it would look like this:--

CYCLOPaeDIA. POOLE'S INDEX.

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

See (for instance) Eclectic Rev., 4th S. 13, 485.

Council of Trent. Quart. Rev., 71, 108.

Chrysostom. For. Quart. Rev., 27, 184.

Congress of Vienna. Brownson's Rev., 2d S. 1, 413; 3, 309.

Cardinal Consalvi. N. Brit. Rev., 10, 21.

THE PANTHEON.

Built by Agrippa. Consecrated, 607, to St. Mary ad Martyros.

Called Rotunda.

THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE.

The Coliseum, _b_. by T. Flavius Vespasian.

SUPREME PONTIFFS.

Popes. The line begins with New-Englander, 7, 169.

St. Peter, A. D. 42. Ends N. Brit. Rev., 11, 135.

with Pius IX., 1846.

POPE WHO CROWNED NAPOLEON.

Pius VII., at Notre Dame, in For. Quart. Rev., 20, 54.

Paris, Dec. 2, 1804.

POPE WHO CROWNED PEPIN.

Probably Pepin le Bref is meant.

But he was not crowned by a Pope. Crowned by Archbishop Boniface of Mayence, at the advice of Pope Zachary.

_b_. @ 715. _d_. 768.

REPUBLIC OF VENICE.

452 to 1815. St. Real's History. Quart. Rev. 31, 420.

Otway's Tragedy, Venice Preserved. Month. Rev., 90, 525.

Hazlitt's Hist, of Venice. West. Rev., 23, 38.

Ruskin's Stones of Venice.

MISSIONARIES IN KENT.

Dublin Univ. Mag., 21, 212.

AUGUSTINE.

There are two Augustines. This is St. Austin, _b_. in 5th century, _d_. 604-614.

Southey's Book of Church.

Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons.

Wm. of Malmesbury.

Bede's Ecc. History.

SAXON IN BRITAIN.

Turner as above. Edin. Rev., 89, 79.

Ang.-Saxon Chronicle. Quart. Rev., 7, 92.

Six old Eng. Chronicles. Eclect. Rev., 25, 669.

FRANK Pa.s.sED THE RHINE.

Well established on west side, For. Quart. Rev., 17, 139.

at the beginning of 5th century.

GREEK ELOQUENCE AT ANTIOCH.

Muller's Antiquitates Antiochianae Greek Orators. Ed. Rev., 36, 62.