what I had read. If there was anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I endeavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and commonly could effect my object."

Sir Edward Sugden explained to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton the secret of his professional success in the following words: "I resolved when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week, but at the end of the twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection." Mem. of Sir T. F. Buxton, ch. xxiv.

He who would read with attention must learn to be interested in what he reads. He must feel wants or learn to create wants which must be supplied. If it be history that he would read with attention, he must feel deficiencies that will not let him rest till they are supplied; he must be moved by a desire that will command its object. Is it poetry or fiction? He must be excited by a restless appetite that longs to be amused with new pictures, or diverted by humorous scenes, or stirred by lofty ideals, or charmed by poetic melody, and that grows by what it feeds on. And the man must master, and not be mastered by, his increasing stock of knowledge and his treasured products of the imagination. He must exercise great and still greater energy in judging and applying the acquisitions he has made, making them accompany his musings, feed his memory, animate his principles, and guide his life.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW TO READ WITH INTEREST AND EFFECT.

༣༦.

WE have seen that a book is the creation of a living man, and should be regarded and judged somewhat as a man himself is tried and estimated. A few books are indeed almost impersonal, and might have been written by one man as readily as by another. These are to be judged chiefly by their value, i. e., by what they contain. But most books express more or less of the personality of their authors; and in reading them, we come in contact with living men. Good books, besides the value of what they contain and impart, have a positive worth in their effect on the principles, feelings and character.

If this is true, then in reading we are properly said to come into communication with a human being, who will either instruct and elevate, or mislead and degrade us. From these fundamental conceptions of Books and Reading, we have begun to derive our rules for the selection of the books which we read, and for our own behaviour in using them. We have also seen that, for success in reading, we must read with attention, and to read with attention, we must read with an awakened and sustained interest. Though this interest when awakened must be regulated by the rules of prudence and duty, yet it often needs to be enkindled and sustained, if we are to read with attention and profit. It becomes then a question of prime concern how we can so arouse, sustain and direct our interest in the books which we read as to make our reading most effective for good. In answer to this somewhat comprehensive inquiry, we reply:

1. If we are at a loss what to read, or if we can think of nothing which we desire especially to read, it is well to ask ourselves what we care most to learn or to think of. No questions are more frequently pressed than these: "What shall I read? What shall I read next? With what books shall I begin a course of reading? What do you think will interest me?" Sometimes a person asks these questions of himself. More frequently he addresses them to another. The best answers which can be given to them are suggested by other questions like these: "What are you most interested to know? In what particulars does your ignorance most disturb or annoy you? With what class of facts and thoughts, principles or emotions would it please you best to be conversant?" If a person can answer these questions with any satisfaction to himself, he is in the way of knowing what books he ought first to read. For if he cannot without assistance find the book which he ought first to lay hold of, he can be more easily directed by another, when his adviser knows what he cares most to know or what excites his keenest appetite.

The great difficulty with the majority of readers is, that their sense is indefinite of any wants which books can supply, or their desire to supply these wants is feeble. Or, if they are aware of their deficiencies in the general, they have neither the courage nor the patience to know them in the detail, and manfully to set about the work of removing them. To many persons the wants which books alone can supply are themselves either created or brought to light by the use of books. Many a man needs first to read and to read with interest, in order to have awakened in his soul a thirst for books and a taste for reading. There are however not a few who through a sense of ignorance, or shame when brought in contact with those better read than themselves, or through some other lucky though perhaps rude shock to their self-conceit and self

content, are suddenly fired with a desire for knowledge from books. Of history they begin to have some inkling, and feel the first desire to learn the story of their own township, their own family, their own nation or their own race. Of eloquence they have some idea, and they seek to be excited by written oratory. Poetry may have moved their ears with its rhythmic melody or charmed their souls with its wizard imagery. The drama or the novel may have startled and enchanted them by its pictured pages. Or perhaps the person who asks, "What shall I read?" or “With what shall I begin?" may have read and studied for years in a mechanical routine, and with a listless spirit; with scarcely an independent thought, with no plans of self-improvement, and few aspirations for self-culture. To all these classes the advice is full of meaning: "Read what will satisfy your wants and appease your desires, and you will comply with the first condition to reading with interest and profit." Hunger and thirst are better than manifold appliances and directions, in respect to other than the bodily wants, towards a good appetite and a healthy digestion. If a man has any self-knowledge or any power of self-direction, he is surely competent to ask himself, what is the subject or subjects, in respect to which he stands most in need of knowledge or excitement from books. If he can answer this question he has gone very far towards answering the question, "What book or books can I read with satisfaction and profit?"

2. It follows by a necessary inference that every man should aim first of all to read and master all the books which relate directly or indirectly to his profession or business in life. If a man is alive to any subject whatever, it is to his chosen occupation in life, and to whatever promises its easier working or more successful issue. If he dislikes his business, if he frets at and fights it, then God only can help him. On such a man human counsel and human aid

must be thrown away; much more must books and reading, if they cannot bring him to acquiesce in his business or to change it. But if a man has something to do day by day in which he strives after the skill which leads to success, and if he can learn anything about it from books, he cannot but read such books as will instruct him, with an excited and prolonged interest. No novelist is held to the charmed page of fiction, no rhapsodist reads and re-reads his favorite poet, with the keen and excited attention with which a man thoroughly aroused by some difficulty in his occupation or his circumstances, resorts to the treatise or the encyclopædia, the journal or the newspaper, which promises to answer the question which he is anxiously pondering. Let a farmer have brooded over the unaccountable loss of his wheat or potato crop, or have anxiously inquired what will restore the blight which is beginning to attack his favorite peach or pear tree, and he devours the printed pages that prescribe a remedy or promise relief. If a mechanic is at fault in his work, and finds his machinery fails to do the service for which it is designed, he feels no lack of interest and suffers under no failure of attention while he is consulting the books which promise to instruct him. Let either learn that by extensive reading he can gain an insight into the secret of certain and progressive success, and he will read widely in relation to his business with an ever-increasing and intensified enthusiasm. The madness of the so-called book-farmers and inventive enthusiasts, illustrates the truth which we assert, that if a man would learn to read with interest and attention, he should first of all read much in respect to his calling in life. If he is a farmer, he should read books of agriculture; if a mechanic, books on machinery; if a banker, books on banking and finance: whatever be his calling, he should make it the one subject upon which he will read, if he reads upon nothing else. In this way he