them solitude means ennui, and anybody's company is preferable to their own. What an immense amount of calm enjoyment and mental renovation do such men miss. Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add a hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile; while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled in the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and every book is a personal friend.-The Enemies of Books. WILLIAM FREELAND. [Living.] Give me a nook and a book, And let the proud world spin round: For wealth or a name with a sound, May big bells jangle your praise, And golden pens blazon your story! Give me a book and a nook Far away from the glitter and strife; The calm and the sweetness of life: Vain world, let me reign in my nook, Pass on, ye lean gamblers for glory, Nor mar the sweet tune of my story! A Birth Song and other Poems. 1882. EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. [Living.] Books-lighthouses erected in the sea of time. WILLIAM E. A. AXON. [Living.] To students and lovers of books, the word library possesses a charm which scarcely any other can claim ; and there are few associations so pleasant as those excited by it. To them it means a place where one may withdraw from the hurry and bustle of every-day life, from the cares of commerce and the strife of politics, and hold communion with the saints and heroes of the past; a place where the good and true men of bygone ages, being dead, yet speak, and reprove the vanity and littleness of our lives, where they may excite us to noble deeds, may cheer and console us in defeat, may teach us magnanimity in victory. There we may trace the history of nations now no more; and in their follies and vices, in their virtues, in their grand heroic deeds, we may see that "increasing purpose" which ": runs through all the ages," and learn how the "thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns. There we may listen to "the fairy tales of science," or to the voices of the poets singing their undying songs. Every man should have a library. The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. And when we have got our little library we may look proudly at Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Bunyan, as they stand in our bookcase in company with other noble spirits, and one or two of whom the world knows nothing, but whose worth we have often tested. These may cheer and enlighten us, may inspire us with higher aims and aspirations, may make us, if we use them rightly, wiser and better men. Ignorance is a prolific mother of vice and crime, and whatever tends to destroy ignorance aims a blow also at the existence of crime. Surely a people who make bosom friends of the wise and good will become better men than they were before, by reason of that companionship. The spoken word as an instrument of education is now becoming of minor importance, and the printed voice is taking its place, chief engine in the dissemination of thought. "An intelligent class can scarcely ever be, as a class, vicious," says Everett. Those who have tasted the sweets of intellectual pleasures will hardly care to descend to lower and grosser forms of enjoyment, and a people familiar with those lessons of wisdom and truth taught by the mighty dead, can hardly fail to be a nation wise, and just, and true.-Article on Free Public Libraries, in " Meliora," October, 1867. ANDREW LANG. b. 1844 [Living]. Ballade of the Book-Hunter. In torrid heats of late July, In March, beneath the bitter bise, And heedless of the public jeers, No dismal stall escapes his eye, He turns o'er tomes of low degrees, There soiled romanticists may lie, Or Restoration comedies; Each tract that flutters in the breeze For him is charged with hopes and fears, In mouldy novels fancy sees Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs. With restless eyes that peer and spy, Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees, In dismal nooks he loves to pry, ENVOY. Prince, all the things that teaze and please, Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears, What are they but such toys as these Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs? DD XXII. Ballades in Blue China. In bibliography, in the care for books as books, the French are still the teachers of Europe, as they were in tennis and are in fencing. Thus, Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his "Philɔbiblon,' ""Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as often as I have a chance of going to Paris! There the days seem always short; there are the goodly collections on the delicate, fragrant book-shelves." We must briefly defend the taste and passion of book-collecting, and the class of men known invidiously as book-worms and book-hunters. They and their simple pleasures are the paths of a cheap and shrewish set of critics, who cannot endure in others a taste which is absent in themselves. . . . We cannot hope to convert the adversary, but it is not necessary to be disturbed by his clamour. People are happier for the possession of a taste as long as they possess it, and it does not, like the demons of Scripture, pursue them. The wise collector gets instruction and pleasure from his pursuit, and it may well be that, in the long he and his family do not lose money. The amusement may chance to be a very fair investment. The Library: 'An Apology for the Book-Hunter." run, 66 JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE (AMERICAN Let us thank God for books. When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken |