SCHOOL-BOOKS.

The improvement in the authorship and manufacture of text-books, from the Primer to the Manuals of our colleges and scientific schools, within the last half century is imWe will refresh the memory of some of our readers by reproducing a few of the tough subjects and illustrations with which they or their fathers were painfully familiar.

mense.

The Horn-book.

Few of us have had the satisfaction of learning our letters after the manner described by Prior :

To

"To master John the English maid

A Horn-book gives of gingerbread;

And that the child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the letter."

many, even a picture of the old-fashioned Horn-book-the Primer of our ancestors, consisting of a single leaf pasted on a board, and covered in some instances with thin

transparent horn to preserve it from being torn or soiled-will be new.

The following description and the accompanying cut we copy from Barnard's American Journal of Education, for March, 1860:

Shenstone, who was taught to read at a dame school near Halesowen, in Shropshire, in

his delightfully quaint poem of the Schoolmistress, commemorating his venerable preceptress, thus records the use of the Horn-book:

"Lo! now with state she utters her command;
Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair;
Their books of stature small they take in hand,
Which with pellucid horn secured are

To save from finger wet the letters fair."

Cowper thus describes the Horn-book of his time :

Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,

A book (to please us at a tender age

'Tis called a book, though but a single page),

Presents the prayer the Saviour deigned to teach,

Which children use, and parsons-when they preach."

Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools, 1784.

In "Specimens of West Country Dialect," the use of the Horn-book is thus shown:"Commether Billy Chubb, an breng the hornen book. Gee ma the vester in tha windor, yor Pal came!-What! be a sleepid-I'll wake ye. Now, Billy, there's a good bway! Ston still there, and mind what I da zâ to ye, an whaur I da point. Now; crisscross, girt â, little a-b-c-d. That's right, Billy; you'll zoon forn the criss-crosslain; you'll zoon auvergit Bobby Jiffry-you'll zoon be a scholard. A's a pirty chubby bway-Lord lov'n !"

We are fortunate in being able to present our readers with an exact transcript of the four pages of the first illustrated alphabet printed in this country. Some of our readers may recognize their old friends of the later editions of the Primer, in which "Young Timothy" and "Zaccheus he" were drawn to nature less severely true. The whole belongs to that department of literature which "he who runs may read, and he who reads will run."

As runs the Glass,

Our Life doth pass.

My Book and Heart

Must never part.

Young TIMO T H Y
Learnt fin to fly.

VASTHI for Pride,

Was fet afide.

JOB feels the Rod,

Yet bleffes GOD.

Proud Korah's troop

Was swallowed up

LOT fled to Zoar,

Saw fiery Shower

On Sodom pour.

MOSES was he
Who Israel's Host
Led thro' the Sea.

Whales in the Sea,
GOD's Voice obey.

XERXES did die,
And fo muft I.

While youth do chear
Death may be near.

ZACCHE US he

Did climb the Tree

Qur Lord to fee.

WEBSTER'S SPELLING BOOK.

Few books have done more to give uniformity to the orthography of the language or to fill the memory of successive generations with wholesome truths than Webster's Spelling Book. Who can forget his first introduction to those four-and-twenty characters, standing in stiff upright columns, in their roman and italic dress, beginning with little a, and ending with that nondescript "and per se;" or his first lesson in combining letters,

Or his exultation in learning to "know his duty" in those "Lessons of Easy Words" beginning,

No man may put off the law of God:

Or the more advanced steps, both in length of words and stubborn morality, in pursuit of The wick-ed flee

In this hasty glance at this famous text book, we have designedly passed over the fa bles commencing with the Rude Boy and ending with Poor Tray, that we might introduce them all unabridged with their unique illustrations.

Of the Boy that ftole Apples.

AN old man found a rude boy upon one of his trees stealing Apples, and defired him to come down; but the young Sauce-box told him plainly he would not. Won't you? faid the old Man, then. I will fetch you down; fo he pulled up fome tufts of Grafs, and threw at him; but this only made the Youngster laugh, to think the old Man fhould pretend to beat him down from the tree with grafs only.

Well, well, faid the old Man, if neither words nor grafs will do, I must try what virtue there is in Stones; fo the old Man pelted him heartily with stones;

which foon made the young Chap haften down from the tree and beg the old Man's pardon.

MORAL.

If good words and gentle means will not reclaim the wicked, they must be dealt with in a more fevere manner.