worth your memory." That is his "writing;" it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a "book."

Now, books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men, - by great leaders, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice, and life is short. You have heard as much before, yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you can not read that; what you lose to-day you can not gain to-morrow?

Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable-boy, when you may talk with kings and queens; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the common crowd for entrée here and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?

Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault. By your aristocracy of companionship there your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take a high place in the society of the living measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the dead.

2. THE SOULS OF BOOKS.

-SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.

SIT here and muse! It is an antique room,
High-roofed, with casements through whose purple

pane

Unwilling daylight steals amidst the gloom,

Shy as a fearful stranger. There they reign (In loftier pomp than waking life had known), The kings of Thought! not crowned until the grave. When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,

The beggar Homer mounts the monarch's throne!

Ye ever-living and imperial souls,

Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe! What had we been, had Cadmus never taught

The art that fixes into form the thought,

Had Plato never spoken from his cell,

Or his high harp blind Homer never strung? Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shake

speare sung.

Lo! in their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels that, side by side, upon our way

Walk with and warn us! Hark! the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!
From them how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardor of the eager Bar;

By them each restless wing has been unfurled,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!

They made yon preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon poet wistful for the star;
Gave age its pastime, fired the cheek of youth;
The unseen sires of all our beings are.

All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and landmarks. In them, we
Who, but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "the Present," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar,-
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,

Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the near less household than the far!
There is no Past, so long as books shall live!

Rise

up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er! Ope but that page-lo! Babylon once more!

Books make the Past our heritage and home;
And is this all? No, by each prophet-sage,-
No, by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem; by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato! by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!—and, above ye all,
By this, the Everlasting Monument

Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day, our lights they are
To the dark bourn beyond; in them are sent
The types of truths whose life is the To-come;
In them soars up the Adam from the fall;

In them the Future as the Past is given;

Even in our death they bid us hail our birth: Unfold these pages, and behold the heaven, Without one gravestone left upon the earth!

3. OBLIGATIONS TO LITERATURE.

-THOMAS HOOD.

I WILL here place on record my own obligations to literature. I owe to it something more than my earthly welfare.

Adrift, early in life, upon the great waters, if I did not come to shipwreck, it was that, in default of paternal or fraternal guidance, I was rescued, like the "ancient mariner," by guardian spirits" each one a lovely light"—who stood as beacons to my course.

Infirm health, and a natural love of reading, hap pily threw me into the company of poets, philosophers, and sages, to me, good angels and ministers of grace. From these silent instructors, who often do more than parents for our temporal and spiritual interests; from these mild monitors, no importunate tutors or wearisome lecturers, but delightful associates, I learned something of the divine, and more of the human, religion.

They were my interpreters in the House Beautiful of God, and my guide among the Delectable Mountains of Nature. They tempered my heart, purified my tastes, elevated my mind, and directed my aspirations. I was lost in a chaos of crude fancies and bewildering

doubts, when these bright intelligences called my mental world out of darkness, like a new creation, and gave it "two great lights," Hope and Memory, -the past for a moon, and the future for a sun.

Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I

Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thoughts;
And thus, from day to day, my little boat
Rocks in its harbor, lodging peaceably. —
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!
Oh, might my name be numbered among theirs,
How gladly would I end my mortal days!

4. BOOKS NOT DEAD THINGS.

JOHN MILTON.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was 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. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.