ect this kind of superiority of the few.

This brings me to say that, in literary examinations, whatever other
means be employed, a sufficiently qualified teacher could arrive at a
nicer and more certain estimate of what a student has appropriated, both
intellectually and spiritually, of a literary product, or any portion of
a literary product, by requiring him to read it, than he could arrive at
through any amount of catechising. The requisite vocal cultivation on
the part of the student is, of course, presumed.

But even an uncultivated voice would reveal appreciation, or the want of
it, to some extent. For, after all, it is not so much the cultivated
voice as spiritual appreciation, which tells in reading. I have heard
'poor, but honest' voices read some poems very effectively, and I have
heard rich, but dishonest voices read very afflictingly. To adapt the
French saying, _le style, c'est l'homme_, it may be said that _la
lecture a haute voix c'est l'homme_. Reading reveals the reader's
spiritual appreciation or the absence of it. And it is only to the
extent that a reader assures his hearers that he has himself experienced
the sentiments to which he gives utterance, that he impresses them. To
one who has truly appreciated it, there is nothing more dreary than the
usual elocutionary rendering of a poem.

Suppose a teacher were to examine a student on such a poem as
Coleridge's Christabel by questioning him about it, and the student were
to show that he was thoroughly acquainted with all the facts and details
of the poem; there would still be no evidence of that student's
susceptibility to what in the poem constitutes its mysterious
charm,--none whatever. The student might be utterly destitute of such
susceptibility, and yet he could just as well prepare himself to answer
all the teacher's questions. A very small boy might do so, whose
appreciation of poetry had not gone beyond 'How doth the little busy
bee.' There might be a most susceptible literary genius in the class,
who might fall below the other student in such an examination! It is
quite likely that he would, for he would be chiefly occupied with the
poem as a poem, and would assimilate its life without retaining a
recollection of all the details, to which the other had given exclusive
attention. Or suppose the poem were Gray's Elegy written in a Country
Churchyard, and the student were to pass a perfectly satisfactory
examination thereupon, on the basis, sa