NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 2. THE PRINCIPLES AND POLICIES OF BRITISH LIBERALISM— The Spirit of Liberalism, Viscount Morley. Progress of the Nation under the Liberal Regime, John Bright "Carpe Diem" (From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam), Edward Fitzgerald.. 536 THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD, Walt Whitman.. O STAR OF FRANCE, Walt Whitman.. THE PURPOSE OF DEMOCRACY, Walt Whitman.. A NEW EARTH AND A NEW MAN, Walt Whitman. DANGERS WITHIN THE STATE, Walt Whitman.. INTRODUCTION This book is the result of a study, extending through five years, of methods by which the required course in literature for elementary college students may be made more effective. The editors, with their colleagues who have been associated in teaching English (3) in the University of North Carolina, were dissatisfied with the prevailing type of course, the study of literary history illustrated by "specimens"-as a requirement for elementary classes made up of students preparing for all sorts of careers. They believed that there should be a sharp differentiation between the methods used in such a course and those employed in advanced elective courses, where philological scholarship and literary criticism have value not only because of the greater maturity of the students but also because these students have chosen their courses through liking for such work. The editors believed, therefore, that that type of course which endeavored to create an interest in literary phenomena, their sequence and relations, was unwise because such interest, even when induced by an experienced teacher, is factitious, possessing little permanent value for the average student, who means to be a farmer, or a banker, or a lawyer, or an engineer. They believed, also, that the type of course which has developed through the dissatisfaction of many teachers with the one just outlined,—the course founded not on technical scholarship but on "interest," a series of pleasant rambles among the foibles of Pepys or in the intricate rhythms of De Quincey, or a compound of love lyrics and fiction and Elia, while more likely than the other to arouse interest in reading, yet offends by its miscellaneousness, its lack of body, its failure to supply material for the development of what Bacon called "the sinews and steel of men's minds.” The present volume recognizes both the need of teaching literature for its human and intrinsic value and the need of providing salutary discipline through a rigid adherence to a logically connected program of ideas. The basis of the book is historical, but it does not represent literary history in the narrower sense. The selections are chosen partly for their value as expressions of permanent human emotions and points of view; partly as landmarks in the march of the Anglo-Saxon mind from the beginning of the modern period. They are intended to represent, not the literary forms and manners, but the dominant ideas of successive epochs in the national life of the two great English speaking peoples, as these ideas have received large and permanent expression in literature. It will be recognized at once that in making this their principle of selection the editors have been true to the deeper current and the main intention of English literature, which has from the beginning been conditioned not by canons and |