finer pleasure in reading and marking passages, which strike us with their power of thought or felicity of style; the finest pleasure consists in re-reading those marked passages. This process condenses an author into a few passages, it may be a few sentences: it compresses the whole of the writers into one Great Book of Life. From my small Library I can construct such for myself: my needs are proportioned to my means—and, small as the compass of this One Book may be, into which the stream of my authors flow, it will take more than all my years to master it.

Books must, therefore, be treated reverentially from the first. A Library should be entered in a cheerful religious spirit. There is indeed a transfiguration, which will become more obvious hereafter.

Aye, aye!-breaks in Onocrotalos; we have not that poverty of spirit which considers that a man can find employment for all his faculties in his Business, whatever that Business may be. This is a man's worst condemnation. He then belongs to his Business, not his Business to him: he is its slave; instead of being industrious, that man is but one of Nature's

:

ARCANGELO's voice, hereupon, rises in exhortation :We shall not refrain from considering the Library in a plain Business way. As a matter of profit and loss in regard to what a man has to make out of his existence.

Perhaps the humbler a man begins the richer and happier he is. The truest owner of a Library is he who has bought each book for the love he bears to it: who is happy and content to say,-" Here are my jewels; my choicest material possessions!" who is proud to crown such assertion, thus,-"I am content that this Library shall represent the use of the talents given me by heaven!" That man's Library, though not commensurate with his love for Books, will demonstrate what he has been able to accomplish with his resources: it will denote economy of living, eagerness to possess the

particles that compose his Library, and quick watchfulness to seize them, when means and opportunities serve. Such a man has built a temple, of which each brick has been the subject of curious and acute intelligent examination and appreciation before it has been placed in the sacred building. Such a man will approach nearer to the immense Soul of Truth than most other workers. He is but little, I grant. So is all that is carthly. Of what account is our planet's orbit in the mighty circles of the stellar systems? We strive to do a complete thing. We learn by degrees that this is impossible. God has his period for perfection: this world and the next. That man is its heir-he best combats earthly frailties-whose mite of service is seasoned by the Religion which pervades true literature, and is exercised to its own cherishing.

III.

"Laura came invested with all her virtues from the planet which she inhabited before she descended on earth. .

Laura's beauty existed in the conception of the Divinity before the creation of the universe.”—PETRARCH.

ARCANGELO. The primary thought in regard to Books, accords with the deep reverence on which you have insisted it is the Idea Beatifical; it ascends to Divinity. The most sacred thing beneath the heavens is the Word of man: the communication of his soul to others, so far as the organs of speech can accomplish it. Letters go farther, and rescue the word from the oblivion of the dying sound and its vibrations in the memories of hearers, and transmit it to other places and other ages. All things human have to submit to imperfections such as surround the expression of the divine soul of man. So has it been with the manifesta

tions of Deity itself on earth: it had to be clothed upon with the frail vesture of flesh-yet nothing less was it than the Word sent from God.

The sentences round which the most devout reveries circle, are those which open the gospel of the disciple whom Jesus loved. Over them the rapt devotion of the Fathers brooded. They rose from the Word of man to seek thereby to understand the Word which was God; and, in turn, from contemplation of the Word in heaven, they descended to attempt the comprehension of the Word in man. Augustine, Basil, Hilary, Chrysostom, meditate upon the transcendent theme, until they perceive the Divine Word as the form of all forms, and man's outward Word though far inferior in degree, yet is it similar in essence and expression to the Divine Word.

This subject has, also, exercised the speculation of philosophers, the vision and ecstasy of poets. But neither have they been able to communicate its unutterable mystery and resplendence. Letters, which fail on many matters-letters, which are but the third medium-fail, and will ever fail on this.

Yet, not the less blessed are Books. Nay, hereby, are they thrice blessed. This is the sum of all thought -the Divineness of the Word! It is the celestial beam, which, shining inwards, purges and disperses all mists, irradiates

"The mind through all her powers:"

nothing can be added to it nor shall anything be taken away from it it abides with men, as Clement the Eighth said of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, "till the last fire shall consume all learning." And thrice blessed are Books, in that they revive, and shall constantly reinspire that thought; and, by so doing, awaken the intellect to excursions which give it the strength of the eagle, strength which the royal bird attains by soaring beyond the ken of men although reaching not the sun;

exalting the soul above the smoke and stir of carth, to anticipations of eternal bliss.

These primary reflexions bring the meditative, and those who would delight in goodness, to see the religious value of words. Whilst, as regards Books-being the utterances of men-they show us them as the holiest acts which men can perform-the communication of their spirit by symbols. In brief, they are equivalents of the spoken Word, so far as art can furnish an equivalent, and, according to their faithfulness, they are more or less divine.

IV.

"A singularly eloquent solitude, and one which bore ample testimony to the triumphs of the Word of God." D'AUBIGNÉ. -On Luther at the deserted Monastery of Nimptsch.

ARCANGELO. The second thought follows close upon the first. Words, when spoken, have their particular force from intonation, occasion, action. But they, too frequently, fail to captivate succeeding generations. The medium of letters cannot reproduce the circumstances which gave them power. So, it has been said, that it is but weariness of the flesh to read the great speech of De la Mothe for the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, which judges rose to hear, and of which crowds hung round the closed doors of the court to catch the faint echoes. Such has been the fate of the eloquence of Chatham, Sheridan, Fox, indeed of most of the thunderers of debate. But Books have more than retrieved for us this natural loss: they have preserved something more subtile and spiritual than the evanescent charms which fascinate an audience. The thinker -in poetry or prose-sacrifices the attraction of the moment to secure the eternal and hence comes the second thought in regard to Books,-that when one of

us is surrounded even by the smallest select number, he possesses the proudest trophies of the western world.

Power is concentrated in them exceeding all computation. We may differ in estimate of authors, but, beyond any dispute, here are the minds that have fashioned us and all that environs us. Nothing is there in art, religion, science, poetry, domestic habits, but owes its present form to the influence and pressure of these imperious souls. Some are pleased to recognise God in History:-here are His chosen instruments. Statistics, state-papers, newspapers, have all been set going by them: armies are moved by their breath the still small voice of the Church is theirs-all that we are-all that the growing ages shall be.

V.

"I by chance let fall a piece of bread; the burgomaster and two peasants rushed forward, and, raising the fragment, placed it on the window-sill :-'You have let fall the Gift of God,' said they."-One Year in Sweden.

AFTER the wide and solemn considerations of Arcangelo, come the more personal: comprising opinions and experiences in regard to Books in general, and to certain Books, poems, or portions thereof, in particular. Of the foremost class is Milton's Areopagitica, which is a landmark in literature; nay, it is rather the voice of a nation, than that of a man,-nay, a cry from Nature herself. England was pledged to Books, from the moment that that Orphic chant of high and passionate thoughts pealed through the land. Of the same character are certain of Wordsworth's sonnets, which were the rallying cry to the sentiment of the great Puritan :