Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join

To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead;
Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,
As gods beneficent, who bless'd mankind
With arts, with arms, and humanized a world.
Pleased at th' inspiring thought, I draw aside
The long-lived volume; and, deep musing, hail
The sacred shades, that, slowly rising, pass.
Before my wond'ring eye.

First of your kind! society divine !

Still visit thus my nights, for you reserved,

And mount my soaring soul, to thoughts like yours,
Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine;
See on the hallow'd hour that none intrude,
Save a few chosen friends, who sometimes deign
To bless my humble roof, with sense refined,
Learning digested well, exalted faith,
Unclouded wit, and humour ever gay.

JOHN WESLEY.

The Seasons: "Winter."

1703-1791.

Read the most useful books, and that regularly, and constantly. Steadily spend all the morning in this employ, or, at least, five hours in four-and-twenty.

"But I read only the Bible." Then you ought to teach others to read only the Bible, and, by parity of reason, to hear only the Bible. But if so, you need preach no more. "Just so," said George Bell. "And what is the fruit? Why, now he neither reads the

472 C. F. DIBDIN-JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Bible, nor anything else. This is rank enthusiasm." If you need no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others too. "Bring the books," says he, "but especially the parchments," those wrote on parchment. "But I have no taste for reading." Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your trade. The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, 1830, vol. viii., p. 315, "Minutes of Some Late Conversations;" &c.

C. FROGNALL DIBDIN.

1776-1847.

From beginning to end I have not been unmindful of the professed view, or title, of this work. Unless I have greatly deceived myself, it will afford comfort to those who at the close of a long and actively spent life, will find a communion with their books one of the safest and surest methods of holding a communion with their God. The library of a good man is one of his most constant, cheerful, and instructive companions; and as it has delighted him in youth, so will it solace him in old age. The Library Companion; or the Young Man's Guide and the Old Man's Comfort in the Choice of a Library.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

1771-1854.

Breakfast dispatch'd, I sometimes read,
To clear the vapours from my head;
For books are magic charms, I ween,
Both for the crotchet and the spleen.
When genius, wisdom, wit abound,
Where sound is sense, and sense is sound;

When art and nature both combine,
And live, and breathe, in every line;
The reader glows along the page
With all the author's native rage!

But books there are with nothing fraught,—
Ten thousand words, and ne'er a thought;
Where periods without period crawl,
Like caterpillars on a wall,

That fall to climb, and climb to fall;
While still their efforts only tend
To keep them from their journey's end.
The readers yawn with pure vexation,
And nod-but not with approbation.
In such a fog of dulness lost,
Poor Patience must give up the ghost;
Not Argus' eyes awake could keep,
Even Death might read himself to sleep!

JOHN KENYON.

Poems: "Imprisonment."

1783-1856.

How oft, at evening, when the mind, o'erwrought,

Finds, in dim reverie, repose from thought,

Just at that hour when soft subsiding day
Slants on the glimmering shelves its latest ray;
Along those darkling files I ponder slow,
And muse, how vast the debt to books we owe.
Yes! friends they are! and friends thro' life to last!
Hopes for the future! memories for the past!
With them, no fear of leisure unemployed;
Let come the leisure, they shall fill the void :

With them, no dread of joys that fade from view;
They stand beside us, and our youth renew;
Telling fond tales of that exalted time,

When lore was bliss, and power was in its prime.
Come then, delicious converse still to hold,
And still to teach, ye long-loved volumes old!

And sweet 'twill be, or hope would so believe,
When close round life its fading tints of eve,
To turn again our earlier volumes o'er,

And love them then, because we've loved before;
And inly bless the waning hour that brings
A will to lean once more on simple things.

"The

Poems: For the Most Part Occasional. "Pretence: a Satire," part ii., Library."

As to daily social readings-continued from year to year, while a family is running through its course of changes they constitute a bright continuity of its intellectual and moral existence. This communion of intelligence, and these recollections of books, that have left an impression upon the memories of the listenersthey readily coalesce with the remembrance of family events. I have said the same as to the connection of the seasons with family history. The book, and the events that marked the time of its perusal, weld into one; and especially it will be so if, in any instance, the heavy hammer of suffering and sorrow has come, stroke upon stroke, so as to make all one in the

memory. Taking a glance round at my own shelves, I see books, never to be forgotten-for they were in course of reading at such and such a time.-Personal Recollections in "Good Words," 1865.

HUGH MILLER.

1802-1856.

How pleasant it is, after one has been shut up for months, mayhap, in some country solitude, or engaged in some over-busy scene, without intelligent companionship, to meet with an accomplished, well-read man, with whom to beat over all the literary topics, and settle the merits of the various schools and authors. It is not less pleasant to turn to one's books after some period of close engrossing enjoyment, and to clear off, among the masters of thought and language, all trace of the homely cares and narrow thinking which the season of hard labour had imperatively demanded.— Essays: "The Amenities of Literature."

JOHN CAMERON. [Living.]

But now-What of books as instruments for the evolution of latent mental power? Books abound— they over-abound; there is nothing of which we have so unmanageable a superfluity; their distracting variety makes it difficult to choose, and hard to hold to those even that we have chosen till we have inwardly digested them. Education is in the ratio of difficulty overcome. The best book, therefore, in this regard, is that which puts the utmost strain upon your faculty of meditation.