From Prof Demmon
Apr. 1894

AN ESSAY

ON

THE STUDY OF LITERATURE,

AND ON

VOCAL CULTURE

AS INDISPENSABLE TO AN ESTHETIC APPRECIATION

OF POETRY.

BY

HIRAM CORSON, A.M.,

EDITOR OF "CHAUCER'S LEGENDE OF GOODE WOMEN;" PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND
OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE,
ANNAPOLIS; LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL SCIENCE, HISTORY,
AND RHETORIC, IN GIRARD COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA.

PHILADELPHIA:

CHARLES DESILVER,

1229 CHESTNUT STREET.

CUSHINGS & MEDAIRY, BALTIMORE.

WOODHOUSE & PARHAM, RICHMOND, VA.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by

CHARLES DESILVER,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

J. FAGAN & SON,

STEREOTYPERS, PHILAD’A.

PRINTED BY É. 0. MARKLEY & SON.

TO MY PUPILS

THIS BOOK

IS DEDICATED.

H. C.

(iii)

On the refining and elevating influence of Poetry........................................

William Ellery Channing. 57

...Matthew Arnold. 61

The Church of Brou........

Century........

Description of a Country Gentleman of the Seventeenth

.....Thomas Babington Macaulay. 69

A Rill from the Town Pump........ ..Nathaniel Hawthorne. 73
The Wreck of the Hesperus....Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 78
Squire Bull and his son Jonathan.....James Kirke Paulding. 82
The Alpine Sheep.....

Spring......

Best method of Reading..

A literary Criticism........

Mrs. Maria White Lowell. 86

..N. P. Willis. 88

.Henry Reed. 89

...Joseph Dennie. 91

The height of the Ridiculous .........Oliver Wendell Holmes. 100

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.........

Edward Gibbon. 101

Gibbon's First Love.......

The Blind Preacher

... Edward Gibbon. 104
William Wirt. 107

The Sea and the Mountains................ ....Oliver Wendell Holmes. 112

My Kate....

Literature and Learning in the reign of Charles II. ...............................

The Human Voice........

...Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 114

Thomas Babington Macaulay. 116

......Oliver Wendell Holmes. 126