loose upon us a host of beings, the most wonderful that were ever created by a human fancy, or that can be gazed upon by the "mind's eye" of the re-creating reader. Milton opens before us the gates of heaven, and we are dazzled at the magnificence of the scene, overwhelmed by the splendid array of the angelic host, or confounded by the glimpses which we catch of the infinite glories of the Uncreated and Eternal. Or "On a sudden open fly With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, and the archangel ruined stands before us, with his compeers-sublime in intellect, degraded by sin, scarred and seared by suffering, yet proud and unsubdued in their relentless wills. Scott, "the magician of the North," marshals before us; with breathless haste, those marvellous creations of his genius, which are as familiar as household words. Dickens and Thackeray, "George Eliot" and Mrs. Oliphant, with many others, send us almost weekly, regular installments from their brain and bid us review with them the creations which they produce for our pleasure. The journalist or reviewer takes us into his closet, and discourses to us with wisdom or wildness, in soberness or extravagance, of the interests that concern the common weal, or the themes which are uppermost for the hour or the week. To read an author is, however, more than to hold communion with a mind in its ordinary state, or by the usual method of hearing the conversation of a person, even in his happiest mood. For by the act of writing the mind is ordinarily raised to its highest energy both of thought and feeling. It condenses as it were and intensifies itself: whatever is good into what is doubly good-whatever is bad into what is doubly bad. It is deliberate. It does not proceed in haste. If a fact is to be stated, it may be examined with care and its truth established. If an opinion is to be expressed, it may be looked at from every side and in all its relations. What is spoken cannot be recalled, but what is written can be revised. The mind in its calmer mood can qualify and withdraw what it penned in fervid haste. New thoughts may modify its first conclusions, new energy may be concentered into some sinewy epithet, and new fervor may be expressed in a "winged word." It follows from this, that a book does not merely represent its author, but it represents the best part of him, -or it may be the worst. It gives the picture of his inner self in forms enlarged and ideally improved. The colors are more intense and more finely contrasted than in the reality of his ordinary experience. Hence, reading a man's book is often worth far more than listening to his conversation. Hence, too, a good book is of more value to the world than a good man-for it is the best part of a good man— the good without the evil. Thus when a wise man dies, while his spirit is living on in one immortal life, he may be also living another immortality on earth-occupying perhaps a wider sphere than when he was in the bodyhis thoughts quickening the thoughts of others, as if he were present to speak them, his feelings inspiring the noblest feelings of others, and his principles prompting to worthy deeds after his own last action is done. It was by more than a figure that Milton wrote, in his Areopagitica: 66 for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them." "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye." The thought will doubtless occur, that this suggestion towards answering the questions, "what is a book, and what is it to read?" applies to certain classes of books, but not to all. There are many books, it may be said, which might as well have been written by an automaton as a man, -books from which we can by no means gather what kind of a man produced them-books which have little or no flavor of the personality of their author. We grant this of a few books, but the number is smaller than we should at first suspect, and it is literally true of no book whatever, that its character and value are not greatly determined by the intellect and culture, the honor and honesty, of the man who made it. The traces of personality are also oftener to be discerned than we imagine. Not only does the man make the book in more respects than we are wont to believe, but he can be known and detected in his book and through his book, more frequently than many readers notice. A dictionary seems to be removed the farthest from any savor or aspect of human personality; and yet in any copious dictionary it is not difficult to discover the feelings and even the prejudices of its author. Those of Dr. Johnson are sufficiently manifest in respect to Excisemen, Pensioners, and his neighbors beyond the Tweed, by his definitions of Excise, Pension, and Oats. Excise he defines as "A hateful tax, levied on commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." Pension, he says, is "An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country." Pensioner is defined to be "A slave of state hired by stipend to obey his master." Oats he describes as "A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." The private opinions of Noah Web ster look out very plainly through the judicial gravity with which he lays down the law concerning scores of words; as for example, when he defines Dandy thus: “In modern usage, a male of the human species who dresses himself like a doll and who carries his character on his back." Every history purports to be an impartial record of facts, and a faithful transcript of the great truths which may be inferred from them. The historian, at the first thought, might be "set down" as nothing more nor less than an impersonal chronicler of actual events and facts. And yet who reads a history, even the most concise or rigidly impartial, who may not als read in the record of his facts the record of the author's partialities, and in his philosophy a transcript of individual prejudices as well as of universal principles? The pithy Tacitus, by a pungent epithet and antithetic phrase, does not more effectually damn some hero in crime to everlasting fame, than he impresses you with a distinct and abiding image of his own. strong and fervid character. Gibbon and Hume, Lingard and Macaulay, Bancroft and Hildreth, Arnold and Froude, have not simply written out the story of the countries which have been their themes, but have also more or less distinctly recorded an abiding memorial of their own characters and principles, if indeed they have not now and then given to the world a distinct expression of their own prejudices and passions. The poet, the dramatist, and the novelist may personate as many characters as they will, and put into the mouths of their fictitious personages the words most appropriate to the character of each-words seemingly very far removed from their own sentiments and feelings; but yet, when it chances that their own private opinions have to be spoken or their individual feelings expressed, it will be done with an energy of words, an intensity of expression, which betrays them as the author's own. Dante and Milton, Goethe and Schiller, Byron and Bulwer, introduce upon their shifting stage an immense variety of characters, and speak or sing through each of them the thoughts and emotions that belong to each. Their own genius lies in the power to forget themselves completely in their characters, or rather to transform themselves into the heroes whom they personate. But now and then occurs a sentence which is weighty with a double meaning, because the author speaks his own cherished opinions through his hero, or a strain will recur so often and in a character so peculiar, that we recognize it as the sad refrain of the poet's own sorrow. Herein is seen the man, and hereby does the individual man assert his right over the impersonal genius. Scott and Shakspeare are the least personal and subjective, the most completely objective and dramatic of all modern writers. Scott was large-hearted and many-sided enough ordinarily to lose himself in his characters. But now and then the reader can detect the humane Scotch sheriff, as well as the romantic and prejudiced tory, in characters and sayings in which neither would confess himself to be present. Shakspeare is rightly called the "myriad-minded:" and it may be hard to discern the man Shakspeare through the countless and strange variety of personages into which he so successfully transforms himself. But the man will speak out in the sonnets, which have been thought by many to have been written in order to satisfy even Shakspeare's longing at times to write in his own character and to give utterance to his own individuality. There are serious and solemn passages in his dramas in which no imitated voice is uttered: in which it is no masked histrionist who speaks, but Shakspeare's self utters sentiments and emotions that he could not repress. It is almost idle to observe that neither Dickens nor Thackeray, Trollope nor George Eliot, can always hide themselves in the motley of |