esting and attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreative than frivolous living."

"I solemnly declare," said Sidney Smith, "that but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for the fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in the mountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched! Upon something it must act and feed-upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life— what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you-which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world-that which will make your

motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud?"

Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon ? Spurgeon and Beecher, Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker, Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me their greatest efforts at a moment's notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need a little recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across the Atlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear of seasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renowned Liverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; fly over to London, take a run through the British Museum and see the wonderful collection from all nations; go through the National Art Gallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take a run through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visit Oxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip to Paris, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep at one of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo (which a rich and ignorant person

offered to buy if they would give him a fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings in existence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand Opera House, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildings were demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elysée, pass under the triumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect the famous palace of Louis XIV., upon which he spent perhaps $100,000,000.

Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter the Parliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, of Gladstone, of Bright, of O'Connor; they will admit me to the floor of the Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of a Clay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will pass me into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums of Greece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of a Demosthenes.

"No matter how poor I am," says Channing; "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to

enrich me with his practical wisdom,-I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live."

With the dead there is no rivalry," says Macaulay. "In the dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant; Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; no difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet.'

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Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify you for the active business of life," says Alexander H. Everett. 'Reject it as a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported by experience."

The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-reading disease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels as an intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels they read, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they read for the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, their memory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectual food. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything but cheap, trashy, sensational novels.

The passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. Beware of intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It is emasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined to go and do something and be something in the world.

The great difference between the American graduate and the graduates from the English universities is that the latter have not read many books superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has a smattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same is largely true of readers in general; they want to know a little of everything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad and indifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading, "something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on the railroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantial books, older books, books which have established their right to exist. They are not so eager for "recent publications."

Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr. Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of his own books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes a notebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplace books. We cannot too heartily recommend this