of Books. They are the chosen possession of

men.

"Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. SoCelia' felt, so 'Clifford' acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any Rune in the wildest imagination of mythologist ever did such wonder as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew BOOK."

But reading does more than give us access to knowledge; it furnishes a most important means of mental stimulus and discipline. If our reading is wise, the mind is nourished and all our faculties are developed and trained by what we read. Reading is not absolutely essential to acuteness and strength of mind, but it is necessary for breadth of knowledge, and, for most of us, it is the necessary means of discipline.

The influence of the books that we read upon our mental habit can scarcely be exaggerated.

We form our opinions from our favorite books. The author whom we most love is our most potent teacher; we look at the world through

his eyes. If we habitually read books that are elevated in tone, pure in style, sound in reasoning, and keen in insight, our minds take on the same qualities. If, on the contrary, we read weak or vicious books, our minds contract the faults and vices of the books. We cannot escape the influence of what we read any more than we can escape the influence of the air that we breathe.

2. Consider the relation of reading to morals. There are books that have no moral quality, good or bad, such, for example, as treat of the exact sciences; Olney's Geometry, or Hardy's Quaternions, has no more immediate relation to morals than the multiplication table has. But most books have a distinct moral quality derived either from the subject or the author, or from both. Works of imagination derive their moral quality chiefly from their authors; though this is by no means without exception, for sometimes an apparently corrupt man produces work that is without a stain. Occasionally genius seems to transcend all conditions. Works of history and travel derive their moral quality from both author and subject. Now, as our

mental quality and bent are very largely determined by our habitual reading, so also our moral sentiments and tastes, and our ideals of excellence, in short, our characters, are profoundly affected by what we read. The influence of books is more subtle and, if they are read in youth, is even more permanent than the influence of associates. An evil companion may lead us into temporary wrong-doing from which, in soberer moments, our whole nature recoils; but an evil book penetrates all defences, and poisons our life at its sources of thought and motive. Examples abound of the effect which reading has on character and conduct. Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life, under the influence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," read at the age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was fourteen. The vicious novels, such as "Claude Duval," "Dick Turpin," and "Sixteen-string Jack," which were still current thirty years ago, made many a highwayman and midnight marauder. The chaplain of Newgate prison in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord-Mayor, referring to many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said that he discovered, "that all these boys, without one exception, had been

in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals” which were published for the alleged amusement of the youth of both sexes. There is not a police-court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be found. No one can measure the moral ruin that has been caused in this generation by the influence of bad books.

While youth is the period of greatest impressibility, and therefore of greatest peril, maturity does not, of itself, bring absolute safety from the influence of corrupt literature. Character in this world never gets beyond the possibility of being bettered or worsened; few are so fortified in virtuous habit that they can with impunity bring their minds into prolonged contact with an evil book.

Some years ago I visited, in a Western city, a family with which I had been long acquainted in the comparatively pure atmosphere of an inland village. The family consisted of husband and wife, still in the freshness and vigor of early manhood and womanhood, and two beautiful boys. As I sat in the snug parlor conversing with the wife, I saw upon the table a copy of an execrable sheet that shall be nameless here; it was evidently a weekly visitor, and in some sense representative of the literature that was coming into that home. Soon I took my de

parture with troubled and foreboding thoughts. Not many months later, being in the city again, I called on the family and was met at the door by a strange face. Asking for Mrs., I was told that she did not live there; that she had left her husband, and they were divorced. The beautiful home was broken up, by no appreciable cause but the vitiating influence of corrupt reading and consequent evil associates. The incident left on my mind an impression never to be effaced.

The harmfulness of bad books is by no means confined to those books which are simply unclean. Many a man's moral life is perverted or debased by books that are not impure, as we commonly understand that term, but books that inculcate false principles. Who that is familiar with European history during the past three hundred years, does not know how baleful has been the influence of Machiavelli's "Prince," which made lying and treachery important elements of kingcraft and diplomacy. Disciples of that book even declared that it was often the duty of a sovereign to lie; and well did Philip II., Catherine de' Medici, Charles IX. of France, and even the great Elizabeth, exemplify such teaching. Indeed European diplomacy has not yet entirely