We have known Book-love to be independent of the author, and lurk in a few charmed words traced upon the title-page by a once familiar hand-words of affectionate remembrance, rendered, it may be, by change and bereavement, inexpressibly dear! Flowers in books are a sweet sign, and there is a moral in their very withering. Pencil-marks in books frequently recall scenes, and sentiments, and epochs in young lives that never come again. The faint line portrays passages that struck us years ago with their mournful beauty, and have since passed into a prophecy. Thoughts and dreams that seem like a mockery now are thus shadowed out. But memory's leaves are not all blanks, or tear-stained, but interwoven, thank God, with many a bright page. Pencil-marks in books have sweet as

well as sad recollections connected with them. We point them out to one another, and call to mind particular periods in our past lives. They also serve to register the change that has gradually and imperceptibly stolen over our own thoughts and feelings.

There are some books which forcibly recall calm and tranquil scenes of by-gone happiness. We hear again the gentle tones of a once familiar voice long since hushed. We can remember the very passage where the reader paused awhile to play the critic, or where that eloquent voice suddenly faltered, and we all laughed to find ourselves weeping, and were sorry when the tale or the poem came to an end. Books read for the first time at some particular place or period of our existence may thus become hallowed for evermore, or we love them because others loved them also in by-gone days.

Books written by those with whom it has been our happy privilege to dwell in close companionship and sweet interchange of sentiment and idea are exceedingly precious. In reading them, we converse, as it were, with the author in his happiest mood, recognise the rare eloquence to which we have often sat and listened spell-bound, and feel proud to find our affectionate and reverential homage confirmed by the unanimous plaudits of the world. The golden key, before mentioned, has been given into our keeping, and we unlock at will the sacred and hidden recesses of Genius and association.-Fraser's Magazine, 1847: "Book-Love."

Reading will not be the less recreative for being methodical. Desultoriness is more to be dreaded than routine. The latter 'need not be mechanical: the

former must always be unproductive. A man may never become a scientific investigator or a profound linguist; he may abandon the hope of enlightening the world with the announcement of some new theory of political economy, or the discovery of some new species of foraminifera; and yet, through assiduous devotion to a few good authors, he may acquire a breadth of view and a refinement of taste that will make his life as instructive and stimulating as any book he himself could possibly have written. He may not have the opportunity of listening to scientific lectures, and may never compose an essay for a mutual improvement society, or send an article to a magazine. Yet in his own domestic circle he may find an audience that will always hang upon his lips when he retails the

results of his reading, pointing some commonplace moral with an apt and striking illustration, or enforcing fatherly counsel by some wise man's weighty apophthegms. Better still will it be if the example become contagious, and the reading father should train up a reading family; if the habit of reading aloud be early fostered, together with the still more valuable habit of free discussion of the topics broached. Such habits as these, besides displacing the vacuity and isolation of home-life in great cities, or the scandals and jealousies of home-life in small towns and villages, would bind together the members of a family by ties more durable than those of sordid self-interest, and enable it to realise its dignity as a small but important unit of a great social system. The past and the future would thus be linked by the profitable engagements of the present; and the accumulation of such units, as of the sand on the sea-shore, would present a breakwater to the waves of barbarism more effectual than the academies of the ancient world, the monasteries of mediævalism, or even the educational appliancesfrom universities to primary schools-of modern times. -London Quarterly Review, 1881: "Books and Book-Hunting."

My wanderings among other people's libraries have led me to make a few discoveries which may or may not be original. Thus, I have laid down the general maxim that, as is the average man, so is the average library. I look not, therefore, for aught beyond the commonplace. Bookshelves are made to match their owner; the books upon them are a counterpart

to the man who possesses them. Thus a beautiful harmony reigns in this as well as in other departments of nature. I am tempted to believe that after learning the profession of a man, studying his face, dress, and bearing, and hearing him talk for a single quarter of an hour, I should be able to tell, within a dozen books or so, all that he has ever bought. The converse of this proposition is certainly true, namely, that a very short examination of a library is sufficient to enable one to describe the owner in general and unmistakable terms.

A pretty allegory might be made showing how a certain Pygmalion collected together a divine library, so beautiful, so perfect, so harmonious in all its parts, that he who made it and gazed upon it was straightway smitten with a passion which made his heart to beat and his cheek to glow; and how presently the library became alive to him, a beneficent being, full of love and tender thought, as good as she was beautiful, a friend who never failed him; and how they were united in holy wedlock and lived together, and never tired of each other until he died, when the life went also out of the library, his wife, and she fell all to separate pieces, every piece a precious seedling of future life should it be planted in the right place. Is there not here the material for an allegory? A library, you will perceive, is essentially feminine: it is receptive; it is responsive; it is productive. You may lavish upon it-say, upon her-as much love as you have in your nature, and she will reward you with fair offspring, sweet and tender babes-ideas, thoughts,

memories, and hopes. Who would not love the mother of such children? Who would not be their father?

It is really an appalling thing to think of the people who have no books. Can we picture to ourselves a home without these gentle friends? Can we imagine a life dead to all the gracious influences of sweet thoughts sweetly spoken, of tender suggestions tenderly whispered, of holy dreams, glowing play of fancy, unexpected reminding of subtle analogies and unsuspected harmonies, and those swift thoughts which pierce the heart like an arrow, and fill us with a new sense of what we are and what we may be? Yet there are thousands and tens of thousands of homes where these influences never reach, where the whole of the world is hard, cruel fact unredeemed by hope or illusion, with the beauty of the world shut out and the grace of life destroyed. It is only by books that most men and women can lift themselves above the sordidness of life. No books! Yet for the greater part of humanity that is the common lot. We may, in fact, divide our fellowcreatures into two branches-those who read books and those who do not.

We do not sufficiently realise what is meant by this cheapness of literature. It means that the most delightful amusement-the chief recreation of the civilised world-the pursuit which raises the mind above the sordid conditions of life, gives 'ideas, unfolds possibilities, inspires noble thoughts, or presents pleasing images-is a thing which may be procured in

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