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CHAPTER VII.

BOOKS AND READING.

N many countries, and some of them Christian countries, the question now is, Canst

thou read? Hast thou been taught those mystic symbols by which thought is poured into the human mind through the printed page? The multitude live and die, in such countries, ignorant even of the very alphabet.

But here, in this land of civil and religious freedom, and where the modest school-house stands hard by the sanctuary, the grand inquiry is, How readest thou? Trained from a child in the knowledge of letters, what use hast thou made of this precious privilege? Dost thou read wisely and well?

There are not wanting, it is true, instances of those who, possessing the ability to read, do not exercise it, for long periods, at all. There are men, so engrossed with their secular occupations, that sometimes, through the week-days of a whole season they do not read a single page of a book, and some of them not so much as a newspaper. We do not refer to the We do not refer to the poor labourer, who must toil for the very necessaries of life, till the

body bears down and almost blots out the mind. We allude to those in whom the insane passion for accumulating property consumes all desire for knowedge, all interest in the culture of those high powers and faculties given by their divine Author, not to be obliterated, but to be unfolded in His likeness.

But to turn from this sad spectacle, and regard those not obnoxious to the charge of doing absolutely nothing to increase their mental capacities by reading. We do all, it may be presumed, read something, either much or little, and either for good or evil, every day of our lives. So augmented is the power of the press, that our land is almost literally flooded with its uninterrupted issues. Compare with the present day the period before the invention of printing. In the middle ages a manuscript could not be hired for a short time, without paying, in some cases, enormous price for its use. Contrast that era when it took five years to copy the Bible, with this, in which Bibles are printed almost with the speed of thought. Compare that period when it cost a small fortune to buy this volume, with our day, in which five copies of the Bible may be purchased for the day's wages of a good workman; and when for a few shillings one can fill a shelf with substantial books.

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And now compute the influence of this mighty mass of productions. What we habitually read gives a hue to our thoughts and feelings and to our daily conversation. It affects, more or less determinately, our entire character, intellectual, moral, and religious. Without disparaging other influences-such as those

of society, home, friendship, observation, and experience-it is safe to say that, on this community at least, an inappreciable effect is produced by the great current of the popular reading. "A good book," says Milton, "is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." It stands sometimes, like the angel in the Apocalypse, one foot on the land, and one foot on the sea, and bears a sway to be felt when time is no

more.

A man's reading is usually a fair index of his character. Observe, in almost any house you visit, the books which lie customarily on the parlour-table, or note what are taken by preference from the public or circulating library, and you may judge, in no small degree, not only the intellectual tastes and the general intelligence of the family, but also-and what is of far deeper moment-you may pronounce on the moral attainments and the spiritual advancement of most of the household. "A man is known," it is said, "by the company he keeps." It is equally true that a man's character may be, to a great extent, ascertained by knowing what books he reads. A bad book cannot be read without making one worse. Bad books are like ardent spirits; both intoxicate,-the one the mind, the other the body; and the thirst for each increases by being indulged, and is never satisfied. Both ruin, the one the intellect, the other the health; and both, the soul. Precious, on the other hand, and priceless, are the blessings that good books scatter in our daily path. They bring us into the society of

the noblest spirits, and carry us into the fairest regions of the earth, and then

"Add the gleam

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration of the poet's dream."

What is our great key to the past? We may learn something, it is true, of a nation's history from its present character, from its institutions, and from its monuments and its traditions, but little compared with what we can gain from the faithfully written page. What should we now know, for example, of the Egypt of the past, if left to its present inhabitants, or to its pyramids alone, for that knowledge? How little we can learn of the fortunes of ancient Greece from the Acropolis or the Parthenon, as they now stand, or from the race which now occupies her soil. Her commerce and agriculture, her arts of peace and war, were imposing; and her architecture and statuary were grand and impressive. But her title-deed to everlasting fame is found in the recorded eloquence of her orators, the splendid effusions of her poets, and the deep wisdom of her sages and philosophers. What can the ruins of Rome-expressive as they are-tell us of her past fortunes, compared with the rich streams of her literature? In each instance, a Thucydides or an Eschylus, a Livy, Tacitus, or Horace, open to us treasures of interpretation on this point, before which all other guides are comparatively dumb.

"Not to know what was before you were, is," as has been truly said, "to be always a child." And it

is equally true that he never becomes a complete man who learns nothing of the former days from reading. "Books," says a good writer, "are the crystalline founts which hold, in eternal ice, the imperishable gems of the past."

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But not for their historical value alone are books important, they are essential to store the mind with science, and to open for it the deep mines of a general literature. "Reading," says Lord Bacon, "maketh a full man." And how else can the mind be filled with good things? Much may be acquired by conversation, yet little compared with what we can read. Few men are in themselves fountains of wisdom and knowledge fewer still have the gift of imparting freely and fully to others by the tongue, so that speech cannot furnish us what will satiate our mental thirst. Observation lends its aid in building up the mind, and in deepening its resources. Yet, after all, its field is narrow. If we depend for all we ever learn on the sight of our own eyes, and the hearing of our own ears, our attainments will be poor and mean. Self-culture and the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, have been long and loudly extolled, and they deserve praise. Count Rumford would walk, it is said, from his home in Woburn, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, ten long miles, to hear a lecture on natural philosophy, a science in which he afterwards became so distinguished by his pen. And he exhibited, in so doing, a spectacle, in one respect, not eclisped in the palmiest hour of his subsequent scientific and and inventive fame.

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