love heals our griefs and fears as hurtful alike to body and soul.

I cannot better end these suggestions than by quoting some words of Bacon, whose wisdom seems to cover every subject he touches. As if speaking to young men, he says: "It is a safer conclusion to say, 'This agreeth not well with me, therefore I will not continue it,' than this: 'I find no offense (or hurt) of this, therefore I may use it ;' that is, don't wait till you are hurt by a habit before giving it up, but find out its ordinary tendency, and act accordingly."

VII.

READING.

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."- BACON.

66 Bring with thee the books."-ST. PAUL.

"These young obscure years ought to be increasingly employed in gaining a knowledge of things worth knowing; especially of heroic human souls worth knowing.". CARLYLE.

""T would be endless to tell you the things that he knew, All separate facts, undeniably true,

But with him or each other they'd nothing to do;
No power of combining, arranging, discerning,
Digested the masses he learned into learning."

A FABLE FOR CRITICS.

66 No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure." -PRESIDENT PORTER.

"It is wholesome and bracing for the mind, to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an essay of Bacon's, for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good." GUESSES AT TRUTH.

VII.

READING.

THE universal distribution of books has given rise to a new and distinct ambition, which may be described as a desire for intellectuality. To be intellectual, or to be regarded as such, is certainly among the ambitions of modern society. The logic of it is plain; men do not like to be out of relation to great facts. The prominent figure, the strong party, the new discovery, fixes their attention and enlists their sympathies. Napoleon, simply by his outstanding greatness as a phenomenon, commands a homage from which our judgment dissents. The dignity and sense of reality that Milton throws about Satan has secured for him what may even be called respect.

Books are the great fact of modern civilization, its finest expression and summation. They stand for intellect; their source, their method, their reception is in the intellect.