tions of the public health, the public morality and popular education. Active and efficient societies are formed for the furtherance of these objects, and the reports and treatises which they will produce must soon become an important part of our literature. Treatises upon education both special and popular are very abundant in our country, and are brought before the notice of all readers of newspapers. There remains to be considered a very large class of works of a more or less decidedly practical character, which in the language of Bacon come home "to men's business and bosoms." Many of these works are more or less Ethical in their influence and character, and may be classed under treatises or suggestions relating to the minor morals. They must almost of necessity be Ethical, for all those writings which propose to teach men how they ought to think and act in respect to any matter whatever must recognize more or less distinctly some standard of duty or some obligation enforced by duty. But these works treat of the minor rather than of the greater morals, of the lesser interests and ends of life, rather than of those commanding objects and aims which are universally and seriously enforced by morality and religion. Lord Bacon's Essays, Civil and Moral, stands confessedly at the head of all works of this class in English literature. It is in a sense properly taken as a model for all, and is one of the wisest and most thoughtful books for men of every condition and every age. It has been edited by Archbishop Whately with abundant comments, all of a solid and interesting character. Whately's edition may be fitly called Bacon adapted to modern times, by a writer of marked good sense. Whately's comments are never unworthy of Bacon. Of books of the class we have in mind, there are hundreds if not thousands in the English language. They are in a sense the legitimate and most characteristic product of the practical tendencies of the English people.

They reflect

that freedom in criticism and discussion which for so many ages has been asserted by English writers, enforced by public opinion and secured by the laws. We can only set down a few of the best, somewhat after the order of time, and shall doubtless omit scores if not hundreds of great value. Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster; Toxophilus. T. Fuller, Holy and Profane State; Good Thoughts in Bad Times. T. Brown, Religio Medici. O. Feltham, Resolves, Moral and Political, etc. A. A. Shaftesbury, Characteristics. Daniel De Foe, The Family Instructor, Political and other Tracts. D. Hume, Essays. The British Essayists from Addison to V. Knox. M. Montaigne, Essays. I. Watts, On the Improvement of the Mind. B. Franklin, Essays. William Cobbett, Miscellaneous Works. W. Irving, The Sketch Book, etc., etc. J. Dennie, The Lay Preacher. E. Sampson, The Brief Remarker. S. T. Coleridge, The Friend and other works. J. Wilson, Noctes Ambrosianæ and other works. C. Lamb, Essays of Elia. Leigh Hunt, The Indicator and other works. T. Hood, Whims and Oddities, and other works. W. Hazlitt, Essays and Criticisms. T. De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium Eater and a score of works besides. T. Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Papers, Sartor Resartus, etc. J. Foster, Essays. Isaac Taylor, Home Education and other works. W. Channing, On Self-Culture and other writings. Anon., Self-Formation or History of the Growth of an Individual Mind. H. Taylor, The Statesman and other writings. Arthur Helps, Friends in Council and other works. Mrs. Ellis, Women of England, etc. Anon., Small Books on great Subjects. John Ruskin's Writings. C. J. and A. Hare, Guesses at Truth. C. C. Colton, Lacon. H. Davy, Consolations in Travel, Salmonia. L. Withington, The Puritan. H. Coleridge, Essays and Marginalia. John Brown, Hora Subseciva, or Spare Hours. H. B. Wallace, Papers in Art and Criticism. F.

Saunders, Salad for the Solitary, etc. G. Mogridge, (Old Humphrey) various works. D. M. Mulock, A Woman's Thoughts about Woman. M. Fuller Ossoli, Papers on Literature and Art, etc. N. P. Willis, Various works. W. Legget, Writings. P. Bayne, Essays. H. Bushnell, Work and Play. H. W. Beecher, Life Thoughts; Star Papers. R. W. Emerson, Conduct of Life and other works. E. P. Whipple, Essays and Reviews. D. G. Mitchell, (Ik. Marvel) Reveries of a Bachelor and other writings. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. A. R. Hope, Book about Dominies. Book about Boys. D'Arcy Thompson, Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster and other works. A. H. Boyd, (The Country Parson) Miscellaneous Volumes. William Smith, Thorndale, or the Conflict of Opinions, Gravenhurst. J. G. Holland, Letters of Timothy Titcomb,

CHAPTER XX.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND SUNDAY READING.

WE approach both these topics with some hesitation. We do not expect that what we write will be understood by all our readers, or will be accepted by all who understand it. Very many persons who are intelligent upon a variety of other subjects never think or read with earnestness upon religion, although in the words of Daniel Webster, “the noblest theme that can occupy the intellect of man is man's relations to God." Lord Bacon also says in sober earnestness that "Theology is the haven and Sabbath of all man's contemplations." Religion and its truths, its theologies and its ethics, its histories and its biographies, its poetry and its criticism, are despised by many otherwise well and even highly cultured persons as the offspring of a fond imagination, a credulous superstition or a timid traditionalism. Or all these are disliked as imposing unwelcome restraints upon the pursuits and passions by which too many are controlled; perhaps they are scorned with passionate contempt from some inherited or conventional associations. There are not a few skeptics or rejectors of Christianity who if honest would be forced to confess with Hume, that they had never read the New Testament through with intelligent attention. On the other hand, there are not a few earnestly and actively religious people who rarely read earnestly upon the very subject which occupies their best emotions and inspires their best activities, either because they never read upon any subject with intelligence and effect, or because they have been trained to conceive that the ex

ercise of a very active intelligence upon religious topics is inconsistent with warm emotion or a confiding faith. Hence the religious reading which they allow themselves is below their intelligence, and done rather for the purpose of exciting devotional feelings or spending a half hour over a quantum of religious phraseology than for the ends of intelligent conviction and reasonable emotion.

They read history, biography, novels, poetry and criticism on the most liberal scale and with excited wakefulness, but their religious reading is limited to one or two books of devotion or a few second-rate biographies of second-rate and goodish people. Others perhaps never care or never dare to read any religious book unless it has the imprimatur of their own religious communion. The Romanist is by necessity almost precluded from any other than Catholic literature. If the reader is a Methodist he is likely to read only such books as are issued by the "Book Concern," if a Presbyterian, to believe only in the blue-backed volumes of "the Publication Society," if an Episcopalian he ignores all works except those written or sanctioned by Churchmen, or if he is a Liberal Christian he may have a traditional and very illiberal contempt for every literary production that proceeds from the so-called Orthodox. A very large class of Christians are so intensely practical or evangelical as to be conscientiously jealous of the exercise of earnest thinking upon religious truth or duty, and are offended by every book which would either awaken or stimulate the intelligence, or requires its vigorous exercise in order to be understood. It must be confessed that religious emotion as such, like every other description of emotion, is not of itself friendly to, or promotive of the exercise of intellectual energy. The fact has been noticed by Coleridge that the fond indulgence of religious feeling has often brought a species of dry rot into a noble intellect by the force of simple stagnation. We hold that this is unnatural and abnor