MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER'S HISTORICAL READER.* TRE history of a nation is
a storehouse of experiences, examples, warnings. We may copy the great models therein contained, we can also build on the ruins. To teach history clearly and simply to the rising generation is no easy task. Everything that bewilders or puzzles must be left out, the word- pictures must be carefully drawn, the lights and shadows clearly defined. Even in these advanced days, the horizon of the youthful mind remains strangely limited. Only the other day the present writer was told of a small boy who knew that he belonged to such.and-such a town, but not that he was an "English" boy. The name had no meaning for him, he never seemed to have heard it before, and yet there was a school in that town. In two small volumes called Things Yeas and Old. Mr. H. 0. Arnold-Forster has condensed * Things Now and Old, By H. 0. Arnold.Forster. 2 vole. London; Canal and Co. and also inwardly digested some solid facts of our national history in a manner that will be intelligible to the youth- ful learners known as belonging to Standards I. and IL That invisible autocrat spoken of with awe by teachers as " The Code," has prescribed " Readers" for those Standards "containing a series of short, easy stories of in- cidents in English history," and Mr. Arnold-Forster says in his preface, " In the present seriea an attempt has been made to fulfil the exact requirements of the Code, and at the same time to introduce in a. special degree one or two fea- tures which are not common to all existing readers." Now, we are all of -as familiar with the histories in dingy bindings that we yawned over in our youth, "Little Arthur," "Aunt Anne," good Mrs. Markham, and those prigs, George, Mary, and Richard, who acquired so much information by questions beginning with "Pray, mamma P" Dickens and Guizot have written Histories of England for their children and grand- children ; Professor Freeman treats of old English times in simple language, and has edited a Historical Course for Schools ; several firms have published "Historical Readers" that it will be hard to supersede ; but all these, as much as Lecky and Fronde, Gardiner and Green, Miss Sewell and Miss Yonge, are as Greek to the class for whom Mr. Arnold-Forster specially writes. His books are clearly the work of no mere book-maker, but of a scholar and a patriot. They bear the mark of the simplicity that is the outcome of knowledge ; they consist, in this case, of stories told in short, concise paragraphs, and in clear, easy language. In the name by which he has called these fragments, Mr. Arnold-Forster has emphasised his aim of teaching in a pic- turesque method the continuity of history. He looks out, as it were, from the standpoint of to-day, and indicates link by link the great chain of events that binds together the present and the past, "Things New and Old." Thus, the village church and the stately cathedral of Canterbury are memorials of days when Christianity was first taught in England ; and in like manner Battle Abbey recalls the Conquest, the New Forest William Rufus, and Charing Cross, with its crowded station, the great reign of Edward I. and the death of his beloved Queen Eleanor. In the account of the coronation-chair and the famous stone it covers, Mr. Arnold-Forster is slightly inaccurate in saying that the "greatest of all the Kings of Scotland, Robert the Bruce, sat upon this stone when he was crowned." The stone was carried away from Scone Abbey to the Abbey of Westminster by Edward I. in 1296; and though Robert Bruce was crowned at Scone, it was not until ten years later, so that it could not have been on the historic stone. Also we find on one page "This chair is as famous as the stone. It was made in the time of King Edward I., six hundred and eighty years ago. In this chair the Kings and Queens of England have been crowned for many hundred years ;" and on the next page, "In the pic- ture we see the crown which is set upon the head of the King or Queen when he or she sits upon the old chair of King Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey." The italics are oars, but there is confusion in the minds of those who have long passed Standards I. and II.
Whether the Volunteers, in their coats of Lincoln Green, known as the "Sherwood Foresters," are a direct link with Robin Hood, we leave to more learned authorities to decide. We cannot help admiring the courageous manner in which that somewhat mythical character is crystallised into a genuine hero ; but, as Charles Dickens says of Blondel's discovery of anus de Lion by means of a song, "You may believe it if you like ; it would be easy to believe worse things." And Mr. Arnold-Forster has Fuller and Stow, to say nothing of Scott and Tennyson, on his side.
His descriptions of the discovery of printing, illustrated by pictures of wooden type and a primitive printing-press, are admirably clear and lucid, and throw a side-light on the noun "press," now expanded into a meaning far beyond the actual machinery used, and expressing concisely the great world of journalistic literature produced by its means. The embryo steam-engine invented by James Watt, and Stephen- son's clumsy "Rocket," precursor of our sixty-mile-an-hour locomotives, are also clearly described and illustrated. All these object-lessons from the pages of the Past are designed to impress on plastic minds the traditions of England's great- ness, and the elements that have made up that greatness. It is as a real lover of his country and his countrymen that Mr.
Arnold-Forster writes, in simple language, of English courage, honesty, and generosity. He tells of King Alfred, Richard the Lion-hearted, Henry V., Sir Philip Sidney, Nelson, Wel- lington, those records, old and new, that must always stir the embers of patriotism, and keep its fire alive. It is well to spare childish minds the horrors of civil wa ; of Henry VIII., and his complicated wives ; of "Bloody Mary's" reign, and the dark scenes at Smithfield or on Tower Hill ; but we miss many familiar friends of early days, such as the Crusades, Magna Charta, the Black Prince, Crecy and Poictiers, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the Spanish Armada, the Gun- powder Plot. Doubtless these will appear in due course of time ; there are still five Standards to be catered for.
The books are easy to hold in small hands, are clearly printed, and carefully illustrated. Outside, on the dark blue cover, is the cross of St. George, and the motto, " St. George for England ; " within, stretched out as by a fair wind, streams the "Union Jack," with its component parts, the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, clearly defined. At the end of the preface, a short note is added :—" The Red Cross on the cover of this book is the Cross of St. George, the Patron Saint of England. The Red Cross has for hundreds of years been carried as the Flag of England. We can see it now in the middle of the Union Jack.' The 23rd of April is St. George's Day. It would be a good thing if every school in England had a 'Union Jack' with the red cross of St. George in it, to hoist on that day." We doubt whether hoisting a flag on April 23rd would further the development of education, though it might arouse latent curiosity in a. patron saint about whom so little is known. "St. George for England," as a war-cry, is never heard in these days of long- distance rifles and Gatling guns, except when a mimic Richard III. exclaims on a stage Bosworth Field :—
"Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!"
Many legends are woven round his memory. The young citizen who possesses a golden sovereign of the later issues, will find him there represented on horseback slaying the dragon of Sylene, just as Christian prevailed against Apollyon, and the Red-Cross Knight overcame the dragon that guarded his Eden. It is said that St. George of Cappadocia was an Arian Bishop of Alexandria, that he was martyred in the third or fourth century, canonised by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century, and certainly adopted by Edward III., in 1330, as patron of the Order of the Garter. We question whether any of the seven Standards could tell us much more about him ; authorities differ even as to the date of his martyrdom, one ascribing it to the persecution of Dio- cletian, another to the time of Julian the Apostate. It is certainly well that our boys and girls should be taught to honour the British flag ; also that an insult to the British flag is an insult to the British nation, and that it is the duty of every citizen to guard his nation from the possibility of insult and injury. Mr. Arnold-Forster has already done good service to his country by the production of his Citizen-Reader, and lais latest work is to be heartily welcomed by old as well as young, teachers as well as scholars, of Standards I. and II.
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