I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memoirs of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections. WORDSWORTH.

BLESSINGS.

Even the best things, ill used, become evils, and contrarily, the worst things, used well, prove good. A good tongue used to deceit; a good wit used to defend error; a strong arm to murder; authority to oppress; a good profession to dissemble; are all evil. Even God's own word is the sword of the Spirit, which, if it kill not our vices, kills our souls. Contrariwise (as poisons are used to wholesome medicine), afflictions and sins, by a good use, prove so gainful as nothing more. Words are as they are taken, and things are as they are used. There are even cursed blessings. BISHOP HALL.

The blessings of fortune are the lowest : the next are the bodily advantages of strength and health: but the superlative blessings, in fine, are those of the mind. L'ESTRANGE.

Health, beauty, vigour, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just. PLATO.

Man has an unfortunate weakness in the evil hour after receiving an affront to draw together all the moon-spots on the other person into an outline of shadow, and a night-piece, and to transform a single deed into a whole life; and this only in order that he may thoroughly relish the pleasure of being angry. In love, he has fortunately the opposite faculty of crowding together all the light parts and rays of its object into one focus by means of the burning glass of imagination, and letting the sun burn without its spots; but he too generally does this only when the beloved and often censured being is already beyond the skies. In order, however, that we should do this sooner and oftener, we ought to act like Wincklemann, but only in another way. As he, namely, set aside a particular half-hour of each day for the purpose of beholding and meditating on his too happy existence in Rome, so we ought daily or weekly to dedicate and sanctify a solitary hour for the purpose of summing up the virtues of our families, our wives, our children, and our friends, and viewing them in this beautiful crowded assemblage of their good qualities. And, indeed, we should do so for this reason, that we may not forgive and love too late, when the beloved beings are already departed hence and are beyond our reach. RICHTER.

BOLDNESS.

This is well to be weighed, that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences: therefore it is ill in council, good in

The ordinary writers of morality prescribe to their readers after the Galenic way; their medicines are made up in large quantities. An essay-writer must practise in the chemical method, and give the virtue of a full draught in a few drops. Were all books reduced thus to their quintessence, many a bulky author would make his appearance in a penny paper. There would be scarce such a thing in nature as a folio; the works of an age would be contained on a few shelves; not to mention millions of volumes that would be utterly annihilated.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 124.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. All other arts of perpetuating our ideas continue but a short time. Statues can last but a few

thousands of years, edifices fewer, and colours still fewer than edifices. Michael Angelo, Fontana, and Raphael will hereafter be what Phidias, Vitruvius, and Apelles are at present,-the names of great statuaries, architects, and painters whose works are lost. The several arts Nature are expressed in mouldering materials. sinks under them, and is not able to support the ideas which are impressed upon it.

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 166.

No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially, and expressing his meaning. ADDISON: Whig Examiner.

Sour enthusiasts affect to stigmatize the finest and most elegant authors, both ancient and modern, as dangerous to religion.

ADDISON.

He often took a pleasure to appear ignorant, that he might the better turn to ridicule those that valued themselves on their books.

ADDISON.

if the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual com

man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

To Chief Justice Coke. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness. BARTHOLIN.

There are books extant which they must needs allow of as proper evidence; even the mighty volumes of visible nature, and the everlasting tables of right reason.

BENTLEY.

Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, limited indeed is the extent, of a virtuous institution. But if education takes in vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt but that it will operate with abundant energy, and to an extent indefinite.

BURKE:

Letter to a Member of the Nat. Assembly, 1791. Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books. CARLYLE.

Readers are not aware of the fact, but a fact it is of daily increasing magnitude, and already of terrible importance to readers, that their first grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly, conscientiously select; and to know everywhere that books, like human souls, are actually divided into what we may call "sheep and goats," the latter put inexorably on the left hand of the Judge; and tending, every goat of them, at all moments, whither we know, and much to be avoided, and, if possible, ignored, by all sane creatures! CARLYLE:

To S. Austin Allibone, 18th July, 1859. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach

of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life Books are the true levellers.

of past ages.

They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling,

DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self-Culture. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this.

DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self-Culture. Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in travelling, in the country. CICERO.

In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of studious meditation, or scientific research, to the capacity of the people: presenting in the concrete by instances and examples what had been ascertained in the abstract and by the discovery of the law. Now, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of the public, into a supreme and unappealable tribunal of intellectual excellence. COLERIDGE.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

JEREMY COLLIER.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid than which to choose: for good books are as scarce as good

companions, and, in both instances, all that we

can learn from bad ones is, that so much time has been worse than thrown away. That writer knowledge and takes from him the least time. does the most who gives his reader the most That short period of a short existence which is rationally employed is that which alone deserves the name of life; and that portion of our life is most rationally employed which is occupied in enlarging our stock of truth and of

wisdom.

COLTON: Lacon, Preface. Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

C. C. COLTON.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not. Swift dedicated a volume to Prince Posterity, and there was a manliness in the act. Posterity will prove a patron of the soundest judgment, as unwilling to give, as unwilling to receive, adulation. But posterity is not a very accessible personage; he knows the high value of that which he gives, he therefore is extremely particular as to what he receives. Very few of the presents that are directed to him reach their destination. Some are too light, others too heavy; since it is as difficult to throw a straw any distance as a ton.

COLTON: Lacon, Preface.

The book of Life is the tabernacle wherein the treasure of wisdom is to be found. The

truth of voice perishes with the sound; truth latent in the mind is hidden wisdom and invisible treasure; but the truth which illuminates books desires to manifest itself to every disciplinable sense. Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books,-how easily, how secretly, how safely, they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting

it to shame. These are the masters that instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if, investigating, you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.

RICHARD DE BURY: Philobiblon, 1344.

Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous " gluttonism" for books.

DE QUINCEY.

Books are loved by some merely as elegant combinations of thought; by others as a means of exercising the intellect. By some they are considered as the engines by which to propagate opinions; and by others they are only deemed worthy of serious regard when they constitute repositories of matters of fact. But perhaps the most important use of literature has been pointed out by those who consider it as a record of the respective modes of moral and intellectual existence that have prevailed in successive ages, and who value literary performances in proportion as they preserve a memorial of the spirit which was at work in real life during the times when they were written. Considered in this point of view, books can no longer be slighted as fanciful tissues of thought, proceeding from the solitary brains of insulated poets or metaphysicians. They are the shadows of what has formerly occupied the minds of mankind, and

of what once determined the tenor of existence. The narrator who details political events does no more than indicate a few of the external effects, or casual concomitants, of what was stirring during the times of which he professes

to be the historian. As the generations change on the face of the globe, different energies are evolved with new strength, or sink into torpor; faculties are brightened into perfection, or lose themselves in gradual blindness and oblivion. No age concentrates within itself all advantages. The knowledge of what has been is necessary, in addition to the knowledge of the present, to enable us to conceive the full extent of human powers and capacities; or, to speak more correctly, this knowledge is necessary to enable us to become acquainted with the varieties of talent and energy with which beings of the same general nature with ourselves have, in past times, been endowed. LORD DUDLEY.

In literature I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again, than to read a new one for the first time. If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask myself whether it is superior to Homer, or Shakspeare, or Virgil; and, in the next place, whether I have all these authors completely at my fingers' ends. And when both these questions have been answered in the negative, I infer that it is better (and to me it is certainly pleasanter) to give such time as I have to bestow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Shakspeare and Co.; and so of other things. Is it not better to try and adorn one's mind by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one's own knowledge that such a book is not worth reading? Some new books it is necessary to read,— part for the information they contain, and others in order to acquaint one's self with the state of literature in the age in which one lives: but I would rather read too few than too many.

LORD DUDLEY.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. FENELON.

In books one takes up occasionally one finds a consolation for the impossibility of reading many books, by seeing how many might have been spared,-how little that is new or striking in the great departments of religion, morals, and sentiment. JOHN FOSTER: Journal.

How large a portion of the material that books are made of, is destitute of any peculiar distinction! "It has," as Pope said of women, of sentences and pages of vulgar truisms and An accumulation just "no character at all." candle-light sense, which any one was competent to write, and which no one is interested in

reading, or cares to remember, or could remember if he cared. JOHN FOSTER: Journal.

Nothing is more delightful than to lie under a tree, in the summer, with a book, except to lie under a tree, in the summer, without a book. C. J. Fox.

the antidote should be changed accordingly, should still be new. Instead, therefore, of thinking the number of new publications here too great, I could wish it still greater, as they are the most useful instruments of reformation. GOLDSMITH:

Citizen of the World, Letter LXXV.

Books, while they teach us to respect the interest of others, often make us unmindful of our own; while they instruct the youthful reader to grasp at social happiness, he grows miserable in detail; and, attentive to universal harmony, often forgets that he himself has a part to sustain in the concert. I dislike, therefore, the philosopher who describes the inconveniences of life in such pleasing colours that the pupil grows enamoured of distress, longs to try the charms of poverty, meets it without dread, nor fears its inconveniences till he severely feels them.

of the Indies.

The

Among men long conversant with books we too frequently find those misplaced virtues of which I have now been complaining. We find the studious animated with a strong passion for the great virtues, as they are mistakingly called, and utterly forgetful of the ordinary ones. declamations of philosophy are generally rather exhausted on those supererogatory duties than on such as are indispensably necessary. A man, therefore, who has taken his ideas of mankind from study alone, generally comes into the world with a heart melting at every fictitious distress. Thus he is induced, by misplaced liberality, to put himself into the indigent circumstances of the person he relieves.

GOLDSMITH: Essays, No. VI. In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary. Savage rusticity is reclaimed by oral admonition alone; but the elegant excesses of refinement are best corrected by the still voice of a studious inquiry. In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the press than the pulpit. The preaching Bonse may instruct the illiterate peasant, but nothing less than the insinuating address of a fine writer can win its way to a heart already relaxed in all the effeminacy of refinement. Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite, but those vices are ever changing, and

A youth who has thus spent his life among books, new to the world, and unacquainted with man but by philosophic information, may be considered as a being whose mind is filled with the vulgar errors of the wise: utterly unqualified for a journey through life, yet confident of his own skill in the direction, he sets out with confidence, blunders on with vanity, and finds himat last undone. GOLDSMITH:

Essays, No. XXVII., and Citizen of the
World, Letter LXVII.

In England, where there are as many new books published as in all the rest of Europe put together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the people; they have been often known to act like fools, they are generally found to think like men. An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legisla ture. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by GOLDSMITH. preventing them. What a world of thought is here packed up together! I know not whether this sight doth more dismay or comfort me. It dismays me to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety affords so much assistance to know what I should.... What a happiness is it that, without the aid of necromancy, I can here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them upon all my doubts; that I can at pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments in all doubtful points which I propose. Nor can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters but I must learn somewhat. It is a wantonness to complain of choice. No law binds us to read all; but the more we can take in and digest, the greater will be our improvement.

Blessed be God who hath set up so many clear lamps in his church: none but the wilfully blind can plead darkness. And blessed be the memory of those, his faithful servants, who have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these