please or attract us, and other things being equal, we cannot but prefer the well written to the badly written book.

Style, indeed, is not to be judged of as a thing of the supremest consequence, but as chiefly valuable, as it renders easy and agreeable the communication of thought and feeling. "The more sash the less light," was a pithy saying in respect of diction, often uttered by a writer who illustrated the rule by his own example. It is slightly too pointed to be altogether true. A window may serve other ends than to let in the white light of winter or the dazzling glare of summer; and style may be allowed to color and warm intellectual clearness with the hues that express emotion, and to set off these hues by varying contrasts of beauty and shading; but when style is characterized by mere pomp and glitter, by artificial nicety or studied effect, it deserves the contempt of every person of sense, as truly when seen in a book as when displayed by man. But as in conversing with men, we are naturally pleased with an easy flow of language from the lips, so is it with language when it is written. There is a natural grace and order and beauty which lend a charm that cannot be described. There is a power in expression by which a word as used by one man will produce a stronger impression than a page composed by another. By one writer thought is thrust forth as dry as a withered branch; by another, through apt illustration, it is made fresh and blooming, like an orange bough just broken from the tree, in which bud, blossom and fruit mingle their fragrance and beauty. From one man truth falls as if wrung from unwilling lips; from another it leaps into form and action, with a resistless energy, warm and living, startling and overpowering.

It is of vital importance to our success and pleasure in reading, that the books which we read should be well written. It is also a prime necessity that our ideal of what good writing is should be just and elevated. Next to bad

morals in writing, should be ranked bad manners in diction, or an infelicitous style. Awkwardness may be excused and even be accepted as an excellence when it betokens sincerity and directness of aim, but vulgarity, affectation, vituperation and bullyism, as well as great swelling words of vanity" and lofty airs of pompous declamation, whether of the Asiatic and Oriental or the American and Occidental type-whether heard in the harangue from the hustings, in the sermon from the pulpit, or in the speech to the universe in the legislature—whether written in the newspaper or the essay, are more nearly akin to moral defects than is usually believed or noticed. Indeed they rarely fail to indicate them. Vague declamation is a kind of conscious falsehood. Empty rhetoric is a certain sign, as well as an efficient promoter of insincerity and hollowness, of sham and pretence in the character.

The fearful slaughter of honest English that is `committed so freely by sensation preachers and traveling politicians under the name of eloquence, and the more fearful depravation of popular taste and public honesty that follows the admiration of such tricks of empty rhetoric and factitious declamation, call for prosecution by the Grand Inquest as dangerous nuisances to the public conscience, no less than as open offences against rhetorical and grammatical propriety.

It is implied in these rules that no person should feel obliged to read everything that is published. Read everything that is published! why should a man think of such a thing? It were as reasonable to feel obliged to talk with every man whom you meet; and to talk with him as long as he chooses to hold you by the button, and this whether he talks sense or nonsense, or whether what he says concerns you little or much or not at all. And yet there are men who aspire to read everything that is printed—men who in order to keep abreast with "the literature of the

day," as they phrase it, labor hard at the service and groan inwardly if not audibly, because the time fails them, amidst the multitude of books which every week brings out. But the attempt and the desire seem to us very unreasonable. Unless, indeed, all authors are equally able and honest, choice as well as necessity should direct to the opposite. For who would listen to an organ-grinder in the streets when he might hear from the noblest of instruments harmonies fit to be played in heaven? Or who would stop to listen to a violin scraper while on his way to a series of solos by Ole Bull or Paganini? Or who would read a blundering, confused or lying history when he might read one that is neat, orderly and trustworthy? Or why read the one when you are satisfied from the other? Who would read a novel or poem that depicts disgusting or degrading scenes, or paints virtuously but feebly, when he might read those that present worthy themes and treat of them well? Books are constantly issued, concerning which it is an honor to a man to say that he has not read them-books which repel a right-minded man on the very slightest acquaintance,-books of which such a man would say instinctively, that he knows enough of them, to wish to know nothing more.

But these thoughts bring us to a graver aspect of books and reading, which we must reserve for another chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS AND READING ON THE

OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

WE have learned that the best books, certainly those which are the most interesting, are the books which most distinctly express some individuality in their authors. We have also learned that that reading is ordinarily the most useful and invigorating which brings us most closely and consciously into contact with writers of marked and earnest personality,

We cannot resist the inference that books and reading must exert a powerful influence upon the opinions and principles. This they do both directly and indirectly— directly, when they address well or ill-reasoned arguments to the understanding; indirectly, when their influence upon the principles is secondary and unnoticed. Hence the rule-and it is a rule of the first importance-that in reading we should make ourselves distinctly aware of the principles of a writer, so far as he consciously or unconsciously expresses them in his writings, so that if need be we may be on our guard against them. This rule is not so necessary in the case of books which are avowedly written for the purpose of defending a system of opinion, or establishing a political, scientific, or theological creed. In such cases the doctrines may be true or they may be false, the opinions may be salutary or pernicious; but the positions are distinctly avowed, and the reasons for them are urged directly and confessedly for the purposes of conviction. There may be serious exposure in such cases, but the ex62

posure is one of which we are distinctly aware, and in which to be forewarned is to be forearmed. In respect to these cases, we do not propose to write a homily on that most important and much abused direction, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good," however useful and greatly needed such a homily might be. We shall not stay to defend the utmost courage and freedom in the formation of our opinions, by the use of light and evidence, from whatever sources these may come. Nor shall we enlarge upon the important consideration that many, not to say most, inquirers after truth may often learn more from the antagonists than they can from the defenders of the opinions which they accept; nor shall we contend that every student and reader should honestly estimate and interpret the force of the arguments on both sides of every question, as they are in fact regarded and held by the defenders of each.

Considerations like these scarcely need to be urged upon thoughtful and earnest readers, in these days of free discussion and large toleration; or, as we might say, these days when, among large classes of bookish and reading men, free discussion is but another name for universal doubt, or a free and easy vacillation of opinion; when free toleration is made both pretext and excuse for intellectual libertinism; when earnest and fixed convictions on many subjects are practically judged to be an affair of association or taste;—when jesting and sneering littérateurs so rarely think of asking What is truth? or, if they ask, do not "wait for an answer."

Nor, on the other hand, do we care to insist on the dangers which lie in the opposite direction, from a premature agitation of opinions, before the mind is capable of a thorough and dispassionate examination of the reasons for or against them, although no abuse of the rule "to read both sides" is more serious in its consequences than that which