the fancy took me, but compare their treatment of different subjects;
_e.g._, you might make yourself a private New Year's Eve service, of all
the poems on it you can find--Coleridge, Tennyson, and Elia's prose poem
on the same subject. Or you could make a Shepherd's Calendar for yourself,
and copy out under each month what poets have said about it, and its
flowers and features generally: or a Poet's Garden; collect all the bits
about flowers, and make a 'Poet's Corner' in your garden, admitting no
flower that cannot bring some poetry as its credential. It will make
country life far more enjoyable if you know your poets as Thomas
Holbrook, in 'Cranford,' knew Tennyson."

"I should like all that, Aunt Rachel; but you have not said anything that
sounds like stiff reading yet."

"No; and you ought to have something that will tax all your powers, as
well as this general cultivation, which will be all pleasant. I should
take some really stiff book, on Logic or Political Economy, or Butler's
'Analogy,' and after each morning's work make a careful analysis of the
argument, leaving one side of your MS. book blank, that you may put in
afterwards any illustrations or criticisms of your own, or others, that
may occur to you in the future. I should always keep a stiff book in hand
and treat it so, even if all other regularity and plan in my reading fell
through--it would be a backbone."

"But I shall have so much writing to do if I am to make a commonplace book
on each subject."

"It will make you slower, but much surer. I know a girl who writes a
review of every book she reads, giving extracts, and an abstract of the
argument and her own opinion of it. She finds it most useful, both as