[Illustration: INTRODUCTION.]

To read and speak with elegance and ease,
Are arts polite that never fail to please;
Yet in those arts how very few excel!
Ten thousand men may read--not one read well.
Though all mankind are speakers in a sense,
How few can soar to heights of eloquence!
The sweet melodious singer trills her lays,
And listening crowds go frantic in her praise;
But he who reads or speaks with feeling true,
Charms and delights, instructs, and moves us too.

Browne.


To deprive Instruction of the terrors with which the young but too often
regard it, and strew flowers upon the pathways that lead to Knowledge,
is to confer a benefit upon all who are interested in the cause of
Education, either as Teachers or Pupils. The design of the following
pages is not merely to present to the youthful reader some of the
masterpieces of English literature in prose and verse, arranged and
selected in such a manner as to please as well as instruct, but to
render them more agreeable to the eye and the imagination by Pictorial
Representations, in illustration of the subjects. It is hoped that this
design has not been altogether unsuccessful, and that the ILLUSTRATED
LONDON READING BOOK will recommend itself both to old and young by the
appropriateness of the selections, their progressive arrangement, the
fidelity of their Illustrations, and the very moderate price at which it