iters, it is very doubtful whether this aim is, in fact, achieved.
The student often has too much work to permit of much outside reading,
and often the library is too limited to give him a good choice, or to
permit him to keep a desirable book until he has finished reading it.
Unguided reading is almost certainly a failure; reading guided only by
putting a selected list of books before the student is not sure to be
a success. The instructor ought from time to time to tell his class
something about the books he suggests, and about their authors and
their careers, viewpoints and merits, as a reader always profits by
knowing these things. As the reading of snatches from collateral books
is hardly profitable, so the perusal of longer histories is often
impossible, and generally confines the student for a long time to the
minutiae of one period while the class is going forward. In view of
these difficulties there is much to be said in favor of putting a
large textbook into the hands of a class, and requiring a thorough
reading and understanding of it, and correspondingly reducing outside
readings. If collateral reading is demanded, it is a good plan to
require students to read a biography or a work on some special
institution falling within the scope of the course,--some selected
historical novel even,--for in that way the student reads, as he will
in later life, something he selects instead of a required number of
pages, a specific thing is covered, an author's acquaintance is made,
and therefore a significant test can be conducted. Furthermore, as
some students will buy special volumes of this kind, the pressure on
the library is reduced. Direct access to reference shelves is always
recommended. One of our universities has a system of renting preferred
books to students.

=Tests on outside reading=

Tests on outside reading are always difficult, but they must be
employed if the reading is not to become a farce. By having weekly
reading reports on uniform cards, one can often arrange groups of
students who have read the same thing and can therefore be tested by a
single question. By extending this over several weeks the majority of
students, even in a large class, can be tested with relatively few
questions. Some instructors require students to hand in their reading
notes, others check up the books the students use in the library,
still others have consultation periods in which they inquire into the
student's reading. Qui