ones and rich ones that know not this happiness.'”

of Osymandyas the king who gave his name, as you may remember, to Shelley's sonnet were inscribed the It would be unsafe, perhaps, to preGreek words puxñs iarpetov, which mean dict that many who hear me will use "the sanatorium of the soul.' "" For this library in the spirit of Heinsius. the soul may be valetudinarian like the But the love of books is one of the body; and, like the body, it has need greatest blessings in life. Only you of a bracing discipline. You can never cannot love a book all at once; with cure any human ill by preaching books, as with men and women, love against it; you must supplant it by is the privilege of long intimacy. It some wholesome vital influence. The is only when books have been read "expulsive power of a new affection,' ‚” | and re-read, and, as it were, clasped to as Cardinal Newman has called it in the heart, that they become in Macauone of his sermons, is the only means lay's words, "the old friends who are of driving out old affections. No doubt never seen with new faces; who are he was thinking of religion, and he the same in wealth and poverty, in meant that one religious faith can be glory and in obscurity." To know even eradicated only by another; it is proof one book in this way is to gain a spiritagainst mere denial. But one taste or ual revelation. It is thus that the habit also yields only to another; it is study of the Bible, even as literature, not destroyed but supplanted. And if has so profoundly affected English life you would draw men away from the and thought; for it often seems to me public-house or the "bucket-shop," that the most sharply drawn of all and from such associations as are con- dividing lines in English history is genial to these places, you must awaken between reading and non-reading Enin them higher tastes and aspirations, gland, or, in other words, between and of these the love of reading is the England without the Bible and Enchief. May I commend to you a pas- gland with it. Our forefathers were sage taken from a book which is not so contented with one book; we are popular nowadays as it was once, Bur- sometimes not contented with many. ton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"? Gibbon says, in his autobiography, that You know he treats first of the causes he would not "exchange his early and of melancholy among men, and then of invincible love of reading for the treasits cure; he says, "So sweet is the ures of India." But modern education delight of study the more learning they has so far equalized the social classes have (as he that hath a dropsy, the of the community that the pleasure of more he drinks the thirstier he is), the reading, which at the beginning of this more they covet to learn, and the last century was enjoyed by a small cultiday is prioris discipulus," and then he vated minority, has already become, or relates the following story, which is is fast becoming, the boon of all. worth remembering: "Heinsius, the Did it ever occur to you to realize keeper of the library at Leyden in Hol- what a change the universality of readland, was mewed up in it all the year ing and writing, which has only come long; and that, which to my thinking to be true since the Education Act of would have bred a loathing, caused in 1870, has made in the English-speaking him a greater liking. 'I no sooner world? It is not the only change (saith he) come into the library, but which distinguishes the nineteenth I bolt the door to me, excluding century from all the preceding centulust, ambition, avarice, and all such ries; for I suppose (to take one examvices, whose name is idleness, the ple) there is no reflection more curious mother of ignorance and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content that I pity all our great

than that the means of locomotion should have remained practically the same from the time of the Pharaohs until the reign of King George the Fourth, and then should have been

An hour a day

is three years; this makes twentyseven years sleeping, nine years dressing, nine years at table, six years playing with children, nine years walking, drawing, and visiting, six years shopping, and three years quarrelling."

revolutionized in a day. But fifty the following manner. years ago a girl who left her village in the country for domestic service was cut off from her home, her family, and all the associations of her past life; she could not write to her parents, nor they to her; and if they did write, or get somebody to write for them, it was impossible for her to read their It may be permitted me to hope that letter; she might be ill, she might be you will not spend your life—at least ruined, she might be dead, and the the ladies will not altogether in this probability was that nobody who felt a way, partly because you will enjoy the natural interest in her story would benefits, moral as well as intellectual, know anything about her. How differ- of this library. Yet, however economent it all is now, when, by the gentle ical of your time you may be, it will be arts of reading and writing, and espe- a practical difficulty for you or for any cially of photography, that beneficent one in the present day to cope with the means of keeping the memory of our vast and ever-increasing mass of literabsent friends and children alive within ature. It is perhaps three thousand our hearts, there is not an incident of years since the invention or use of her life, wherever she may be, but it writing, and during that time the writis familiarly known to all the members ers of many nations and many ages of her family! Dreary indeed was the have been pouring out books, until the old age of the poor fifty years ago, stream of literature has swollen into a without books, without newspapers, cataract -a very Niagara of books without any broadening interests. But which sweeps, or threatens to sweep, to-day, even where the parents cannot away the delights of civilization before read, their children are their inter- it. The reader of to-day aspires to preters of human things, and whatever pain the parents may feel, as is not unnatural, in the consciousness of their own inferiority, is more than compensated by their honest pride in their children's culture.

know something of the thoughts which the wisest of men in all the periods of history have expressed upon the most vital subjects of human interest. He cannot, therefore, acquiesce in narrow reading. He must read You, ladies and gentlemen, to whom widely, not in English only, but in this library will offer in future the re- many languages, or in translations sources of its many thousand volumes, from them. He must cultivate a coswill all be readers; and I do not see mopolitan literary spirit. But life is how I can better utilize the few min- short; and alas! art is long, and is utes in which I have the honor of ad- becoming longer; the number of books dressing you than by trying to give you which a busy man can read in a year such advice as will help you to read can hardly at the most exceed fifty; wisely. For most of those who employ and, considering what a strain is now this library will not be students; they put on the most absorbing literary will not have unlimited time for read-appetite, I am at a loss to see how any ing books; it is perhaps only for a brief hour, when the toll of the day is done, that they will think of getting literary information. Sydney Smith said once : "Live always in the best company when you read. No one in youth thinks on the value of time. Do you ever reflect how you pass your life? If you live to seventy-two, which I hope you may, your life is spent in

man who lives at the end of the twentieth century will deserve to be called educated at all. For books do not become shorter as they become more numerous, it rather seems that they increase in bulk and volume; for Gibbon wrote the history of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," a period of fifteen hundred years, in eight octavo volumes, and a living his

torian occupies the same number of volumes with the history of less than thirty years in England alone.

how they

read; they must be told
ought to read, and what. For in all
life it is not the work which men have
to do that makes the difference, it is
the way in which they do it. A man
may do little or nothing and be always
at work, or he may administer an em-
pire and be at leisure.
Let me sup-
pose, then, that you have an hour a
day, and no more, to expend upon
literature.

ies, puts the matter clearly: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." It is fair to say that there will be a great saving of time, if the number of books which require to be "chewed and digested" is made as small as possible.

In these circumstances, looking to the accumulating mass of literature which is new, busy men have hit upon various methods of arriving by a kind of short-cut at literary knowledge. One method has been to choose an arbitrary number of the best books, and to concentrate attention upon them. Sir John Lubbock is, I think, There are two perfectly different responsible for the original list of The ways of reading a book. It is curious. Hundred Books which are most widely that we often speak of reading as if it approved, and he, if any one, is com- were always the same thing. But nopetent to make the selection; but the body, after consideration, will maintain number has been found too large, or it that it is possible or necessary to read has not been always accepted, and so it" The Proverbs of Solomon " and has been reduced by various authorities "King Solomon's Mines" in the same until it has come to be supposed that way. Bacon, in his essay upon studthere is no difficulty in determining a number, however small, of the best books in the world, and I remember that a lady wrote to me not long ago asking me to name the three best books, exclusive of the Bible. Then, again, it has been thought possible to acquire an insight into literature by selections or extracts from famous books, or by abridgments of them. It sometimes happens that a person reads a review of a book and imagines he has done as much as if he had read the book itself. But upon the whole I would venture to give you a serious warning against all extracts and abridgments, whatever they may be. The author of a book has a right to demand that, if it is read, it should be read as he wrote it; it is not the same book when it is cut up or boiled down. And as to reviews, they are not the book at all; they are more the book than a man's clothes are the man himself; and, if you have ever written a book and seen it reviewed, it is only too likely that you have experienced a sense of astonishment at observing that, though you may not have possessed a complete knowledge of the subject with which it deals, yet at least you knew more than the reviewer.

no

There is an art of reading, I think, as well as an art of writing. It is not enough that people should be told to

I do not deny that the habit of concentrating the full power of the mind upon every chapter and page of a book is a discipline of very high value. The study of books written in a foreign language, whether ancient or modern, forms this habit, and is principally valuable as forming it. In fact, it may be doubted if a person ever reads his own language in such a way as to appreciate its full meaning. But the great majority of books in a public library do not require and do not deserve to be so read. In looking at some statistics of the books taken out. of one of the public libraries by the working classes, I notice that the class of books which is in most request is novels, and the class which is in least request is sermons. It is not for me, being a clergyman, to declare with what degree of attention sermons ought to be read. But I confidently say that

There is an exhilaration in the thorough study of noble literature. It gives tone and courage to the mind. The famous novelist, George Eliot, says it was her wont to seek inspiration for her writings by daily intercourse with the good and great writers of the past. May you learn the satisfaction of living, if but for an hour each day, in the company of the good and great!

nearly all novels admit of light and | cal's "Pensées; in political science, rapid reading. Where the point of a Aristotle's "Politics," Montesquieu's book lies in its narrative rather than in "L'Esprit des Lois," and Adam its style or substance, the process of Smith's "Wealth of Nations;" in sci"tearing out its heart," as it has been ence, Bacon's "Novum Organum," called, is the secret of alleviating labor. | Newton's "Principia" (if it be intelliTo some extent the same is true of gible to you), and Darwin's " Origin history, and especially of that fascinat- of Species - these are all or nearly ing form of history — biography. You all the books that have been " epochdo not want to know or remember all making," and to read these will be to the incidents; you want to grasp the enter, however humbly, into the temple general contour of the country (if I of knowledge and truth. may use a geographical expression), not to be able to name every height and valley in it. Nor must it be forgotten that you have made an acquisition of knowledge which is well worth having, if your reading enables you not, indeed, to produce your facts at an instant's call, but to discover where they are to be found and what they are, when leisure is given you. It appears to me, then, that one book in twenty should be read scrupulously; the rest may be read, so to say, currente oculo. But it is more important to read wisely than to read widely. Intellectual health, like physical, depends not upon the amount of food consumed, but upon the digestion. And, if it be necessary to decide what books are they that should be read not with the eye only but with the soul, they will be such books as, in the German phrase, have been "epoch-making," and have exercised a lasting influence upon the current of human thought. They are not many, but in them is contained the essence of all literature. In religion, the Bible, and these two books which are most closely founded upon it, the "De Imitatione Christi" and "The Pilgrim's Progress;" in poetry, the writings, or some at least of the writings, of the four great masters Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethewho guard the portals of human sentiment for all time; in history, Thu- SOME years ago I had charge of a cydides and Gibbon as respectively postal division on the western coast, illustrating the perfection of historical parts of which had seldom, if ever, science in miniature and on a scale been visited by a European officer. of majestic dignity; in philosophy, The people were for the most part simPlato's "Republic," which by the gen-ple folk and very superstitious. One ius of the late master of Balliol has morning I received information that a been made an English classic, aud Pas- considerable sum of money, forming

For the last word that I will say in the hope of enabling you to make the best use of the library which is now opened, is that you will do well if you read something that is worth reading every day of your lives. One hour a day amounts to many weeks in a lifetime; and it is not by doing great things now and then, but by doing something continually, that the best and most lasting results are attained. "The modern university," says Mr. Carlyle somewhere, "is a library." It is a university in which you all may graduate. It is a home which stands above the stress and pain of evil days. For literature, like virtue, is its own reward; and none but they to whom that reward has been given know or imagine how unspeakably great it is.

From The Times of India. TRIAL BY ORDEAL.

part of the contents of the mail from a | among grains of uncooked rice and cut head to a sub-office, had been stolen limes, the whole sprinkled with red on the road. The whole affair was powder. A curtain was drawn across wrapped in mystery. The only clue the door and the men entered one at a the police had been able to obtain was time. As each one appeared the Brahthat one runner, whom we shall call min seized his hands and raised them Rama, had since the theft paid off cer- to his forehead, and then allowed him tain debts in the village which had long to pass on and join his fellows. Compressed upon him; but there were no ing to Rama he went through the same other suspicious circumstances, and the pantomime, but instead of allowing man had done ten years' good service. him to pass on bade him to stand aside. As a last resource it was determined to | When the last man had gone through resort to trial by ordeal, and for this the ordeal the Brahmin turned to Rama purpose an aged Brahmin, who was and said quietly, "Tell the sahib how supposed to possess occult powers and you stole the money. to be in daily communion with the gods, was consulted, and readily undertook to discover the thief. All the runners, a goodly array of sturdy Mahratta peasants, were summoned to the office; and under the guidance of a cheyla, or disciple of the old Brahmin, we all proceeded to the small, deserted temple of Mahadeo, situated at some distance from the village. It was a desolate spot and bore an evil reputatiou. The temple, owing to some desecration in the past, had been abandoned, and was almost buried among weeds and tangled brushwood.

To my utter amazement Rama fell on his knees, confessed that he was the thief, and offered to show where he had hid the balance of the money. He had succeeded in opening the mail bag without seriously disturbing the seals; the postmaster had not really examined them, and so their having been manipulated had escaped notice. Needless to say, the Brahmin was rewarded and poor Rama was sent to repent at leisure in the district jail. Now the natural question is, How was it done?" Very simply. The temple, the lonely glen, the uncanny hour, the incantations, all were mere accessories to appeal to the superstitions of the ignorant peasants. The

magic wand" was thickly smeared with strongly scented sandalwood oil. Rama's guilty conscience prevented him from touching it, as he firmly believed the wand would stick to his hands, and his, of course, was the only hand that did not smell of the oil.

The hour selected was about 6 P.M., and the long twilight shadows gave the place a weird, uncanny look. The old Brahmin was awaiting us, and as we approached appeared to be busy muttering incantations. The runners all seemed to be more or less under the spell of the hour, but the look of real fright on Rama's face was quite distinct. The Brahmin, having finished his incantations, arose and, addressing the men, said: "You are about to face the gods; to the innocent the trial will be nothing, but to the guilty much. In the temple a magic wand has been placed on the altar. Each of you must A GLANCE at Mr. Topsel's account of go in turns, take up the wand and turn certain animals which are not to be round three times, repeating the name found in our zoological gardens, and of Mahadeo; the wand will stick to the which have been overlooked by ninehand of the guilty one." By this time teenth-century naturalists, may not be it was nearly dark; I glanced in without interest even for the sceptical through the door of the temple. A modern reader. He describes several solitary oil buttee threw a fitful light on the altar, on which an ordinary bamboo stick about two feet long reposed

From The Cornhill Magazine. AN ELIZABETHAN ZOOLOGIST.

varieties of apes which were quite unknown to Darwin, notably the satyr and the sphinx. Satyrs, he tells us,