How to Do It Part 6

IDOLS IN MECCA.

Burckhardt's Travels.

Burton's Travels.

NEW ZEALAND.

3 islands, as large as Italy. N. Am. Rev., 18, 328.

Discovered, 1642; taken by Cook for England, 1769.

Gov. sent out, 1838. West. Rev., 45, 133.

Thomson's story of N. Z. Edin. Rev., 91, 231; 56, 333.

Cook's Voyages. N. Brit. Rev., 16, 176.

Sir G. Gray's Poems, &c. of Living Age.

Maoris.

LONDON BRIDGE.

5 elliptical arches. "Presents an aspect unequalled for interest and animation."

ST. PAUL'S.

Built in thirty years between 1675 and 1705, by Christ.

Wren.

Now I am by no means going to leave you to the reading of cyclopaedias.

The vice of cyclopaedias is that they are dull. What is done for this pa.s.sage of Macaulay in the lists above is only preliminary. It could be easily done in three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. And when you have done it, you have taught yourself a good deal about your own knowledge and your own ignorance,--about what you should read and what you should not attempt. So far it fits you for selecting your own course of reading.

I have arranged this only by way of ill.u.s.tration. I do not mean that I think these a particularly interesting or particularly important series of subjects. I do mean, however, to show you that the moment you will sift any book or any series of subjects, you will be finding out where your ignorance is, and what you want to know.

Supposing you belong to the fortunate half of people who know what they need, I should advise you to begin in just the same way.

For instance, Walter, to whom I alluded above, wants to know about _Fly-Fishing_. This is the way his list looks.

FLY-FISHING.

CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE'S INDEX.

(For instance) Quart. Rev., 69, 121; 37, 345.

W. Scott, Redgauntlet. Edin. Rev., 78, 46, or 87; 93, 174, or 340.

Dr. Davy's Researches, 1839. Am. Whig Rev., 6, 490.

Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. N. Brit. Rev., 11, 32, or 95; I, Naturelle des Poissons, Vol. 326; 8, 160; or Liv. Age, 2, XXI. 291; 17, I.

Blackwood, 51, 296.

Richardson's Fauna Bor. Amer. Quart. Rev., 67, 98, or 332; 69, 226.

Blackwood, 10, 249; 49, 302; De Kay, Zoology of N. Y. 21, 815; 24, 248; 35, 775; Aga.s.siz, Lake Superior. 38, 119; 63, 673; 5, 123; 5, 281; 7, 137.

Fraser, 42, 136.

See also,

Izaak Walton, Compleat Angler. (Walton and Cotton first appeared, 1750.) Humphrey Day's Salmonia, or The Days of Fly-Fishing, Blakey, History of Angling Literature.

Oppia.n.u.s, De Venatione, Piscatione et Aucupio. (Halieutica translated.) Jones's English translation was published in Oxford, 1722.

Bronner, Fischergedichte und Erzahlungen (Fishermen's Songs and Stories).

Norris, T., American Angler's Book.

Zouch, Life of Iz. Walton.

Salmon Fisheries. Parliamentary Reports. Annual.

"Blackwood's Magazine, an important landmark in English angling literature." See Noctes Ambrosianae.

H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Independent, 1853.

In the New York edition of Walton and Cotton is a list of books on Angling, which Blakey enlarges. His list contains four hundred and fifty t.i.tles.

American Angler's Guide, 1849.

Storer, D. H., Fishes of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Storer, D. H., Fishes of N. America.

Girard, Fresh-Water Fishes of N. America (Smithsonian Contributions, Vol. III.).

Richard Penn, Maxims and Hints for an Angler, and Miseries of Fishing, 1839.

James Wilson, The Rod and the Gun, 1840.

Herbert, Frank Forester's Fish of N. America.

Yarrel's British Fishes.

The same, on the Growth of Salmon.

Boy's Own Book.

Please to observe, now, that n.o.body is obliged to read up all the authorities that we have lighted on. What the lists mean is this;--that you have made the inquiry for "a sermon book and another book," and you are now thus far on your way toward an answer. These are the first answers that come to hand. Work on and you will have more. I cannot pretend to give that answer for any one of you,--far less for all those who would be likely to be interested in all the subjects which are named here. But with such clews as are given above, you will soon find your ways into the different parts that interest you of our great picnic grove.

Remember, however, that there are no royal roads. The difference between a well-educated person and one not well educated is, that the first knows how to find what he needs, and the other does not. It is not so much that the first is better informed on details than the second, though he probably is. But his power to collect the details at short notice is vastly greater than is that of the uneducated or unlearned man.

In different homes, the resources at command are so different that I must not try to advise much as to your next step beyond the lists above. There are many good catalogues of books, with indexes to subjects. In the Congressional Library, my friend Mr. Vinton is preparing a magnificent "Index of Subjects," which will be of great use to the whole nation. In Harvard College Library they have a ma.n.u.script catalogue referring to the subjects described in the books of that collection. The "Cross-References"

of the Astor Catalogue, and of the Boston Library Catalogue, are invaluable to all readers, young or old. Your teacher at school can help you in nothing more than in directing you to the books you need on any subject. Do not go and say, "Miss Winstanley, or Miss Parsons, I want a nice book"; but have sense enough to know what you want it to be about.

Be able to say,--"Miss Parsons, I should like to know about heraldry," or "about b.u.t.terflies," or "about water-color painting," or "about Robert Browning," or "about the Mysteries of Udolpho." Miss Parsons will tell you what to read. And she will be very glad to tell you. Or if you are not at school, this very thing among others is what the minister is for. Do not be frightened. He will be very glad to see you. Go round to his house, not on Sat.u.r.day, but at the time he receives guests, and say to him: "Mr.

Ingham, we girls have made quite a collection of old porcelain, and we want to know more about it. Will you be kind enough to tell us where we can find anything about porcelain. We have read Miss Edgeworth's 'Prussian Vase' and we have read 'Palissy the Potter,' and we should like to know more about Sevres, and Dresden, and Palissy." Ingham will be delighted, and in a fortnight, if you will go to work, you will know more about what you ask for than any one person knows in America.

And I do not mean that all your reading is to be digging or hard work. I can show that I do not, by supposing that we carry out the plan of the list above,--on any one of its details, and write down the books which that detail suggests to us. Perhaps VENICE has seemed to you the most interesting head of these which we have named. If we follow that up only in the references given above, we shall find our book list for Venice, just as it comes, in no order but that of accident, is:--

St. Real, Relation des Espagnols contre Venise.

Otway's Venice Preserved.

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

Howells's Venetian Life.

Blondus. De Origine Venetorum.

Muratori's Annals.

Ruskin's Stones of Venice.

D'Israeli's Contarini Fleming.

Contarina, Della Republica di Venetia.

Flagg, Venice from 1797 to 1849.

Cra.s.sus, De Republica Veneta.

Jarmot, De Republica Veneta.

Voltaire's General History.

Sismondi's History of Italy.

Lord Byron's Letters.

Sketches of Venetian History, Fam. Library, 26, 27.

Venetian History, Hazlitt.