40 to be "read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing, and written not with a view of mere communication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if 45 he could, he would, the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would. You write instead; that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice 50 merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to 55 say it clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing or group of things manifest to him, this, the piece of true knowledge or sight which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to 60 seize. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on rock if he could, saying: "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate and drank and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew, this, if any65 thing of mine, is worth your memory." This is his "writing"; it is in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription or scripture. That is a "Book."

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men, by great readers, 70 great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that; 75 that what you lose today you cannot gain tomorrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stableboy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect 80 that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entrée1 here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, -the chosen and the mighty of every 85 place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 90 your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in 95 this company of the dead.

1 1 Entrée, right to enter.

"The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, I must also say, because, observe, this court

of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this, 100 it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portières of that silent 105 Faubourg St. Germain,2 there is but brief question: "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? 110 and you shall hear it.

Learn to understand it, But on other terms?— No.

If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but there we neither feign nor inter115 pret. You must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings if you would recognize our presence.'

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these 120 people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your love in two ways:

1 Elysian gates, gates to Elysium and the "Abode of the Blessed," in Greek mythology.

2 Faubourg St. Germain, a famous aristocratic street in Paris.

First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe, not to find your own expressed by them. 125 If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects.

Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is, that's exactly what I think!" But the right 130 feeling is: "How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find 135 yours. Judge it afterward if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once, - nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time 140 arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words, too; but he cannot say it all, and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parable, in order that he may be sure you want it.

145

I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward, and will make themselves sure that you deserve it 150 before they allow you to reach it. But it is the

same with the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there 155 is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops; so that kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there, and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they needed. 160 But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in

little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where; you may dig long and find none; you must dig painfully to find any.

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 165 When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself: "Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim, myself, my sleeves well up to my elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?" 170 And keeping the figure a little longer, even at a cost

of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. 175 And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiseling and patientest 180 fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.

JOHN RUSKIN.