smith had got hold of Richardson's novel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily together according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing. "The lover of reading," says Leigh Hunt, "will derive agreeable terror from Sir Bertram and the Haunted Chamber; will assent with delighted reason to every sentence in Mrs. Barbauld's Essay; will feel himself wandering into solitudes with Gray; shake honest hands with Sir Roger de Coverley; be ready to embrace Parson Adams, and to chuck Pounce out of the window instead of the hat; will travel with Marco Polo and Mungo Park; stay at home with Thomson; retire with Cowley; be industrious with Hutton; sympathising with Gay and Mrs. Inchbald; laughing with (and at) Buncle; melancholy, and forlorn, and self-restored with the shipwrecked mariner of De Foe." Carlyle has wisely said that a collection of books is a real university. The importance of books has been appreciated in many quarters where we might least expect it. Among the hardy Norsemen runes were supposed to be endowed with miraculous power. There is an Arabic proverb, that "a wise man's day is worth a fool's life," and though it rather perhaps reflects the spirit of the Califs than of the Sultans, that "the ink of science is more precious than the blood of the martyrs." Confucius is said to have described himself as a man who "in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgot his food, who in the joy of its attainment forgot his sorrows, and did not even perceive that old age was coming on." Yet, if this could be said by the Chinese and the Arabs, what language can be strong enough to express the gratitude we ought to feel for the advantages we enjoy! We do not appreciate, I think, our good fortune in belonging to the nineteenth century. Sometimes, indeed, one may be inclined to wish that one had not lived quite so soon, and to long for a glimpse of the books, even the school-books, of one hundred years hence. A hundred years ago not only were books extremely expensive and cumbrous, many of the most delightful books were still uncreated-such as the works of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, and Trollope, not to mention living authors. How much more interesting science has become especially, if I were to mention only one name, through the genius of Darwin! Renan has characterised this as a most amusing century; I should rather have described it as most interesting presenting us with an endless vista of absorbing problems; with infinite opportunities; with more than the excitements, and less of the dangers, which surrounded our less fortunate ancestors. Cicero described a room without books, as a body without a soul. But it is by no means necessary to be a philosopher to love reading. means Reading, indeed, is by no necessarily study. Far from it. "I put," says Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his excellent article on the "Choice of Books "I put the poetic and emotional side of literature as the most needed for daily use." In the prologue to the Legende of Goode Women, Chaucer says: "And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, And to him give I feyth and ful credence, But I doubt whether, if he had enjoyed our advantages, he could have been so certain of tearing himself away, even in the month of May. Macaulay, who had all that wealth and fame, rank and talents could give, yet, we are told, derived his greatest happiness from books. Sir G. Trevelyan, in his charming biography, says that-" of the feelings which Macaulay Macaulay entertained towards the great minds of bygone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable; how they guided |