should be complete in one month must begin to be defective the next.

Courses of reading from an elder adviser or friend to a pupil or protégé, even if they are hastily prepared, serve a good purpose as pictures of the times. They cast more or less light upon the culture and knowledge which prevailed when they were written. A very distinguished clergyman of New England, furnishes the following list of books for a young pastor in 1792. "In Divinity, you will not wonder if I recommend President Edwards' writings in general; Dr. Bellamy's and Dr. Hopkins'; President Davies' Sermons; Robert Walker's Sermons; Howe's do; Addison's Evidences; Beattie's Evidences of Christianity; Leland's View of Deistical Writers; Berry Street Sermons;in History Prideaux's Connection; Rollin's Ancient History; Goldsmith's Roman History; do. History of England, or Rider's History of England which is more prolix and particular; Robertson's History of South America; do. History of Charles V; Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts; Ramsay's History of the War; Guthrie's and Morse's Geography; Josephus' History of the Jews;-Watts on the Mind; Locke on the Human Understanding;-Spectator; Guardian; Tattler; Rambler; Pamela; Clarissa; Grandison; Telemachus; Don Quixote; Anderson's Voyage; Cook's Voyages; Milton; Young's Night Thoughts; Vicesimus Knox's Essays; Do. On Education ;-Buchan's Family Physician; Tissot on Health. These may be sufficient-but additions may be easily made. The great danger will be of getting useless and hurtful books, especially Novels and Romances which generally corrupt, especially young minds; beside the loss of the purchase money and the time spent in the reading of them."

Another paper of a later date was prepared by a clergyman, of some reputation for literature, for a young lady, whose mind the writer sought to direct, and, as is very

likely, whose heart and hand he sought to win. It is as follows: "List of Books for a young lady's Library." "Cann's small Bible (with marginal references); Horne's Paraphrase on the Psalms; Mrs. Hannah More's Strictures on Female Education; Mrs. Chapone's Letters to her Niece; Grove on the Sacrament; Mason on Self-Knowledge; Doddridge's Rise and Progress, etc.; Newton on the Prophecies; Guide to Domestic Happiness and the Refuge; Cowper's Works, 2 vols.: Young's Night Thoughts; Elegant Extracts in Poetry; Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Rambler; Thomson's Seasons; Dwight's Conquest of Canaan; Washington's Life; Trumbull's History of Connecticut. This list of books might be enlarged, and perhaps upon recollection some alteration might be made, but these are well calculated to mend the heart, to direct the imagination and thoughts to proper objects, and to give command over them upon good principles. To read profitably we should always then have some object in view more than merely to pass away time, by letting words run off our tongue or through our minds. *** Order and system in any business, and certainly in cultivating the mind, is really necessary, if we would be benefited by study. It is by having a few books well chosen and attentively and perseveringly read, that we fix in our mind useful principles. Books are multiplied without number, and it becomes perplexing to run from one to another, and none are well understood when we read in this manner. The Bible should always stand first in our esteem and be read first daily. It affords every species of reading, history, biography, poetry, etc.,—and shows the heart in its true character."

If anything would discourage us from prosecuting the plan of writing upon Books and Reading, it would be the perusal of this paper of well-meant truisms and well-worn commonplaces. It does not follow, however, because

advice upon any subject is especially liable to degenerate into meaningless generalities, that advice should never be given; nor, because it is comparatively easy to discourse safely with uplifted eye-brows about the books we read and the companions we choose, that such counsel should never be given at all. The much-needed pilot-boat must run the risk of being itself stranded upon dangerous flats and beguiling shallows, if it would preserve the vessel from being ingulfed in the deeper seas, and the more terrible breakers.

There are not a few readers who reject all guidance and restraint some from inclination, and some from a theory that counsel and selection interfere with the freedom of individual taste and the spontaneity of individual genius. Their motto in general is: "of all the sorts of VICE that prevail ADVICE is the most vexatious." So far as read ng is concerned, it is, "In brief, sir, study what you most affect.” One person, they insist, cannot advise for another, because one cannot put himself in the place of another. "Read what speaks to your heart and mind; let your own feelings be your guide, and leave critics and advisers to their stupid analyses and narrow or prejudiced judgments. Read that you may enjoy, not that you may judge; that you may gather impulse and inspiration, not that you may understand the reasons or explore the sources of the instruction and enjoyment which you unconsciously derive from the books in which you most delight." There is truth and force in this position, we grant. No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. If I do not myself find in a book something which I myself am looking for, or am ready to receive, then the book is no book for me whatever, however much it may be for another man. But to assert that one cannot help another to select and to judge of books is, in principle, to renounce all instruction and dependence on those who are older and

wiser than we. To be consistent, it would turn every man into a hermit or a savage. Such a position is sometimes silly self-conceit; sometimes simple pride; sometimes it is a voluptuous animalism that would find in literature both stimulus and excuse for sensual indulgence. The wise adviser would respect the tastes of each reader, and would even bid him both gratify and follow them, but he can do something to aid him in discerning what they are, and why, and how far they are to be allowed, or, if need be, restrained. Inspiration, genius, individual tastes, elective affinities, do not necessarily exclude self-knowledge, selfcriticism, or self-control. If the genius of a man lies in the development of the individual person that he is, his manhood lies in finding out by self-study what he is and what he may become, and in wisely using the means that are fitted to form and perfect his individuality.

Others are especially jealous of the use of any moral standard in the critical judgments of books, or in the advice which is furnished concerning methods of reading. Such persons would be instinctively repelled from the papers which we propose to write, as they may have already inferred that we intend to use ethical considerations very freely, and perhaps severely. Against this they will inwardly protest in thoughts like these:-What has literature to do with morality? Poetry and fiction, essays and the drama, history and biography-everything in short which we usually call literature-aim to present man and his experiences as they are, and not as they ought to be. It is the aim and end of all these to describe, and not to judge, to paint to the life, and not to praise or condemn. The reader, not the writer, may judge if he will and as he will. But, in order to be able to judge, one must see all sides of human nature and human life, and these must be portrayed with energy and truth as they are; he must survey every manifestation of the human soul, the evil as

well as the good, the passionate as truly as the self-controlled. The censor who brings the laws of duty to measure and regulate our reading, who judges of books as he judges of men, interferes with the freedom that gives all its life to literature and most of the zest and value to reading.

There is some truth in all this; or rather, there is a truth which is perverted into this caricature and error. What the truth is, and how far it may be carried without perversion and danger, we will show as we proceed. For the present, we observe that no mistake can be more serious than to suppose that the law of conscience and the rules of duty have nothing to do with the production and enjoyment of literature, as many modern libertines in the field of imaginative writing would have us believe. Ethical ideals are produced by the same creative imagination which furnishes the poet and the novelist their materials and their power. Ethical truth is but another name for imagination holding "the mirror up to nature," i. e., to nature in man, or human nature. Nature in man invariably prescribes ethical standards, and to these the imagination responds when she sets forth fiction as fact, poetry as truth, and history as reality in its highest import and loftiest significance. Not only is this true, but much more than this can be shown most satisfactorily.

If the lessons of these facts teach anything, they teach that literature must respect ethical truth if it is to reach its highest achievements, or attain that place in the admiration and love of the human race which we call fame. The literature which does not respect ethical truth, ordinarily survives as literature but a single generation. The writer who gives himself to any of the untruths which are known as superficial, sensual, Satanic, godless, or unchristian, ordinarily gains for himself either a brief notoriety or an unenviable immortality. He is either lost, or damned to fame.