Among other devotional works most frequently recommended are Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ, Pascal's Pensées, Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Butler's Analogy of Religion, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and last, not least, Keble's beautiful Christian Year. Aristotle and Plato again stand at the head of another class. The Politics of Aristotle, and Plato's Dialogues, if not the whole, at any rate the Phado, the Apology, and the Republic, will be of course read by all who wish to know anything of the history of human thought, though I am heretical enough to doubt whether the latter repays the minute and laborious study often devoted to it.

Aristotle being the father, if not the creator, of the modern scientific method, it has followed naturallyindeed, almost inevitably-that his principles have become part of our very intellectual being, so that they seem now almost self-evident, while his actual observations, though very remarkable--as, for instance, when he observes that bees on one journey confine themselves to one kind of flower-still have been in many cases superseded by others, carried on under more favorable conditions. We must not be ungrateful to the great master, because his own lessons have taught us how to advance.

Plato, on the other hand, I say so with all respect, seems to me in some cases to play on words: his arguments are very able, very philosophical, often very noble; but not always conclusive; in a language differently constructed they might sometimes tell in exactly the opposite sense. If this method has proved less fruitful, if in metaphysics we have made but little

advance, that very fact in one point of view leaves the Dialogues of Socrates as instructive now as ever they were; while the problems with which they deal will always rouse our interest, as the calm and lofty spirit which inspires them must command our admiration. Of the Apology and the Phædo especially it would be impossible to speak too gratefully.

I would also mention Demosthenes's De Coroná, which Lord Brougham pronounced the greatest oration of the greatest of orators; Lucretius, Plutarch's Lives, Horace, and at least the De Officiis, De Amicitiâ, and De Senectute of Cicero.

The great epics of the world have always constituted one of the most popular branches of literature. Yet how few, comparatively, ever read Homer or Virgil after leaving school.

The Nibelungenlied, our great Anglo-Saxon epic, is perhaps too much neglected, no doubt on account of its painful character. Brunhild and Kriemhild, indeed, are far from perfect, but we meet with few such "live" women in Greek or Roman literature. Nor must I omit to mention Sir T. Malory's Morte d'Arthur, though I confess I do so mainly in deference to the judgment of others.

Among the Greek tragedians, Eschylus, if not all his works, at any rate Prometheus, perhaps the sublimest poem in Greek literature, and the Trilogy (Mr. Symonds in his Greek Poets speaks of the "unrivalled majesty" of the Agamemnon, and Mark Pattison considered 'it "the grandest work of creative genius in the whole range of literature "); or, as Sir M. E. Grant Duff recommends, the Persa; Sophocles (Edipus Tyrannus), Euripides (Medea), and Aristophanes (The

Knights and Clouds); unfortunately, as Schlegel says, probably even the greatest scholar does not understand half his jokes; and I think most modern readers will prefer our modern poets.

I should like, moreover, to say a word for Eastern poetry, such as portions of the Maha Bharata and Ramayana (too long probably to be read through, but of which Talboys Wheeler has given a most interesting epitome in the first two volumes of his History of India); the Shah-nameh, the work of the great Persian poet Firdusi; Kalidasa's Sakuntala, and the Sheking, the classical collection of ancient Chinese odes. Many, I know, will think I ought to have included Omar Khayyam.

In history we are beginning to feel that the vices and vicissitudes of kings and queens, the dates of battles and wars, are far less important than the development of human thought, the progress of art, of science, and of law, and the subject is on that very account even more interesting than ever. I will, however, only mention, and that rather from a literary than a historical point of view, Herodotus, Xenophon (the Anabasis), Thucydides, and Tacitus (Germania); and of modern historians, Gibbon's Decline and Fall ("the splendid bridge from the old world to the new "), Hume's History of England, Carlyle's French Revolution, Grote's History of Greece, and Green's Short History of the English People.

Science is so rapidly progressive that, though to many minds it is the most fruitful and interesting subject of all, I cannot here rest on that agreement which, rather than my own opinion, I take as the basis of my list. I will therefore only mention Bacon's Novum Organum,

Mill's Logic, and Darwin's Origin of Species; in Political Economy, which some of our rulers do not now sufficiently value, Mill, and parts of Smith's Wealth of Nations, for probably those who do not intend to make a special study of political economy would scarcely read the whole.

Among voyages and travels, perhaps those most frequently suggested are Cook's Voyages, Humboldt's Travels, and Darwin's Naturalist's Journal; though I confess I should like to have added many more.

Mr. Bright not long ago specially recommended the less known American poets, but he probably assumed that every one would have read Shakespeare, Milton (Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus and minor poems), Chaucer, Dante, Spenser, Dryden, Scott, Wordsworth, Pope, Southey, Byron, and others, before embarking on more doubtful adventures.

Among other books most frequently recommended are Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Boswell's Life of Johnson, White's Natural History of Selborne, Burke's Select Works (Payne), the Essays of Bacon, Addison, Hume, Montaigne, Macaulay, and Emerson; the plays of Molière and Sheridan; Carlyle's Past and Present, Smiles's SelfHelp, and Goethe's Faust and Autobiography.

Nor can one go wrong in recommending Berkeley's Human Knowledge, Descartes's Discours sur la Méthode, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding, Lewes's History of Philosophy; while, in order to keep within the number one hundred, I can only mention Molière and Sheridan among dramatists. Macaulay considered Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne the best novel in any

language, but my number is so nearly complete that I must content myself with English and will suggest Miss Austen (either Emma or Pride and Prejudice), Thackeray (Vanity Fair and Pendennis), Dickens (Pickwick and David Copperfield), G. Eliot (Adam Bede or The Mill on the Floss), Kingsley (Westward Ho!), Lytton (Last Days of Pompeii), and last, not least, those of Scott, which indeed constitute a library in themselves, but which I must ask, in return for my trouble, to be allowed, as a special favor, to count as

one.

To any lover of books the very mention of these names brings back a crowd of delicious memories, grateful recollections of peaceful home hours, after the labors and anxieties of the day. How thankful we ought to be for these inestimable blessings, for this numberless host of friends who never weary, betray, or forsake us!