SIR JOHN LUBBOCK (1834-) IR JOHN LUBBOCK has written a number of the most pleasantly instructive essays that could well be imagined. He is a member of the British Parliament, President of the Institute of Bankers, President of the Linnean Society of Great Britain, Trustee of the British Museum, Vice-President of the Royal Society, and the inventor of an admirable system of identifying ants by splotches of paint on their backs. A man of such diversified usefulness could not have expected to escape reproach, and Sir John can hardly have been surprised if his discoveries of the almost miraculous intelligence shown in the management of the ant hills he has kept under glass for observation, excited something of the same incredulity which rewarded Huber's discovery of the intellectual operations of ant life. Lubbock's "Ants, Bees, and Wasps," published in 1882, and his book on "The Senses, Instinct, and Intelligence of Animals," published six years later, made him a general favorite as a writer of popular science. But this popularity has been far surpassed by his moral essays collected and given coherency under the title of "The Pleasures of Life." Few moralists have equaled him in usefulness. "The Pleasures of Life" is still running through one edition after another, and it is doubtful if its circulation has been equaled by any novel published since it was issued,-a proof, if proof were needed, that the public is fonder of nothing than of being preached to by the right person in the right way. A SONG OF BOOKS "Oh for a booke and a shadie nooke, Eyther in-a-doore or out; With the grene leaves whispering overhede, Where I maie reade all at my ease, Both of the newe and olde; For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke, Is better to me than golde." -Old English Song. F ALL the privileges we enjoy in this nineteenth century, there is none, perhaps, for which we ought to be more thankful than for the easier access to books. The debt we owe to books was well expressed by Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, author of "Philobiblon," published as long ago as 1473, and the earliest English treatise on the delights of literature: «< These are the masters who 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." This feeling that books are real friends is constantly present to all who love reading. "I have friends," said Petrarch, "whose society is extremely agreeable to me; they are of all ages and of every country. They have distinguished themselves both in the cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them, for they are always at my service, and I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from it, whenever I please. They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my spirits; while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to restrain my desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their information I may safely rely in all emergencies. In return for all their services, they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation, where they may repose in peace; for these friends are more delighted by the tranquillity of retirement than with the tumults of society." "He that loveth a book," says Isaac Barrow, "will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, so in all fortunes. " Southey took a rather more melancholy view: "My days among the dead are pass'd, Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day." Imagine, in the words of Aikin, "that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics what an inestimable privilege should we think it! -how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a wellfurnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Cæsar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress." "Books," says Jeremy Collier, "are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being 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." 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. Sir John Herschel tells an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order. |