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THE PARROT.

THE deep affections of the breast,
That Heaven to living things imparts,
Are not exclusively possess'd

By human hearts.

A Parrot from the Spanish main,

Full young, and early caged, came o'er, With bright wings, to the bleak domain Of Mulla's shore.

To spicy groves, where he had won

His plumage of resplendent hue,
His native fruits, and skies, and sun,
He bade adieu.

Instead, he watch'd the smoke of turf
A heathery land and misty sky,
And turn'd on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.

But, petted, in our climate cold

He lived and chatted many a day;
Until, with age, from green and gold
His wings grew grey.

At last, when blind and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laugh'd, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come

To Mulla's shore;

He hail'd the bird in Spanish speech;
The bird in Spanish speech replied,
Flapp'd round his cage with joyous screech,
Dropt down, and died.

Campbell.

MY FRIEND IN THE WOOD.

METHOUGHT a thrush upon a tree
Sweetly sang one day to me,
"Poet, poet, hear me, hear me!"
"Hear thee," I at once replied;
"Honest fellow, aye, with pride."
And then he poured out such a tide
Of joy to cheer me.

"Happy, happy bird," said I,
"Ever would I linger by."
"Poet, poet, hear me, hear me !"
Loud and louder yet he sang,
Till the distant woodlands rang
With his wild and merry clang,
And all to cheer me.

Capern.

t

THE FLOWERET.

THROUGH the forest idly
As my steps I bent,

With a free and happy heart

Singing as I went, Cowering in the shade,

Did a floweret spy,

Bright as any star in heaven,

Sweet as any eye.

Down to pluck it stooping,
Thus to me it said:
“Wherefore pluck me, only

To wither and to fade?"

Up with its roots I dug it,
I bore it as it grew,
And in my garden-plot at home

I planted it anew,

All in a still and shady place,
Beside my home so dear;

And now it thanks me for my pains,

And blossoms all the year.

Goethe: Martin.

THE WILD ROSE.

A BOY espied, in morning light,
A little rosebud blooming;
'Twas so delicate and bright,
That he came to feast his sight,
And wonder at its growing.
"Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Rosebud brightly blowing!
I will gather thee," he cried,
"Rosebud, brightly blowing."
"Then I'll sting thee," it replied,
"And you'll quickly start aside,
With the prickle glowing:"
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Rosebud brightly blowing.
But he plucked it from the plain,
The rosebud brightly blowing:
It turn'd and stung him,—but in vain ;
He regarded not the pain,

Homewards with it going:

Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,

Rosebud brightly blowing.

THE END.

Goethe: Martin.

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW STREET SQUARE.

THE GRADUATED SERIES OF READING-BOOKS.'

Now ready, Book the SECOND, price 1s. 6d. Book the THIRD, price 2s. and BOOK the FOURTH, price 2s. 6d.

being the first three published,

A GRADUATED SERIES OF FIVE

READING-LESSON BOOKS,

Adapted, as a Progressive Course of Reading, for all Classes of English Schools and Families.

In course of publication, as follows:—
FIRST BOOK, about 200 pages (nearly ready).
SECOND BOOK, 256 pages (now ready)
THIRD BOOK, 312 pages (just published)
FOURTH BOOK, 440 pages (recently published) .
FIFTH BOOK, about 500 pages (in the press)..

s. d.

1 0

....

....

1 6

2 0

2 6

...

3 0

THIS is an entirely new series of English Reading-Lesson

Books, in which the difficulty of the Exercises is graduated chiefly with reference to the mental capacity requisite to comprehend and grasp the information conveyed; and also, as far as possible, with reference to the peculiarities of grammatical construction. The object of the Series is no less to facilitate the acquisition of the art of reading than to form a pupil's taste, and to tempt him to pursue his studies voluntarily. BOOK I. will consist entirely of short simple stories, easily understood by children who have mastered the first steps in reading. Book II. contains miscellanies, tales of adventure, imaginative and real, and anecdotes in natural history, and is preliminary to Book III. BOOK III. comprises classified literary selections corresponding in arrangement with Book IV., to which it is introductory. In Book V., which will complete the course, the reading-exercises will be adapted to perfect and test the pupil's knowledge of the proficiency he has acquired in the other four; and it will aim at answering the practical purposes of a Class-Book of English Literature. The Second, Third, and Fourth Books are now ready. The First Book is in the press; and the Series will be completed in the course of the present year. The following prospectus explains in detail the plan and objects of this important Series.

AS

S the title imports, a leading feature of the Graduated Series will be the graduation of the difficulty of the lessons. This feature characterises, indeed, in a greater or less degree, all school readingbooks which have any pretensions to the name. But the novelty of the present project is, that it seeks to carry out the idea of graduation more thoroughly, and to base it on a more philosophical foundation than existing works of the same kind have attempted to do. It has hitherto been the practice to graduate reading-lessons, almost exclusively, either according to the complexity of the grammatical constructions, or according to the difficulty of the words which occur in them. This practice has resulted from a too limited view of what the term reading should imply. A lesson cannot be said to be properly read unless it is fully comprehended; and it obviously by no means follows that a lesson

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