loose conversation for most of their knowledge and objects of thought; instead of forming their judgments in crowds, and receiving their chief excitement from the voice of neighbours, men are now learning to study and reflect alone, to follow out subjects continuously, to determine for themselves what shall engage their minds, and to call to their aid the knowledge, original views, and reasonings of men of all countries and ages; and the results must be, a deliberateness and independence of judgment, and a thoroughness and extent of information, unknown in former times. The diffusion of these silent teachers, books, through the whole community, is to work greater effects than artillery, machinery, and legislation. Its peaceful agency is to supersede stormy revolutions. The culture, which it is to spread, whilst an unspeakable good to the individual, is also to become the stability of nations.Self-Culture: An Address introductory to the Franklin Lectures, at Boston, 1838.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

1783-1859.

The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow. The Sketch Book.

LEIGH HUNT. 1784-1859.

Were I to name, out of the times gone by,
The poets dearest to me, I should say,
Pulci for spirits, and a fine, free way;
Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye;
Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high;
Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play;
Horace for chatting with, from day to day;
Shakspeare for all, but most, society.

But which take with me, could I take but one?
Shakspeare,- —as long as I was unoppress'd
With the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser ;
But did I wish, out of the common sun,

To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest,

And dream of things far off and healing,-Spenser.

London Examiner, Dec. 24, 1815.

We like a small study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like to feel them about us,to be in the arms of our mistress Philosophy, rather than see her at a distance. We do not know

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how our ideas of a study might expand with our walls. Montaigne, who was Montaigne "of that ilk," and lord of a great chateau, had a study "sixteen paces in diameter, with three noble and free prospects." "The figure of my study is round, and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up by my table and my chairs: so that the remaining parts of the circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon five degrees

of shelves round about me." A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, upon the same reasoning as before; but we like to have some green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as much as possible in the country when we are not there. Milton expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen; thus letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination of them.

"And let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice great Hermes; or unsphere
The Spirit of Plato, to unfold

What world or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook."

The Indicator. 1819.

Sitting last winter among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fire-side could afford me,-to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet,-I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books; how I loved them too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and my Arabian Nights; then above them at

my Italian Poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my Romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on my writing desk; and thought how natural it was in Charles Lamb to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer.

I entrench myself in my books, equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my moveables; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to be able to lean my head against them.

I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself, give me a small snug place almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window In it, looking upon trees. Some prefer a place with few or no books at all; nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus: but I should say that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did not recollect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round tower, walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one's books while writing: at least they say so. For my part, I think I have them in a sort of sidelong mind's eye; like a second thought, which is none; like a waterfall, or a whispering wind.

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The very perusal of the backs is a 'discipline of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell: there Guzman

d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.

How pleasant it is to reflect that the greatest lovers of books have themselves become books! What better metamorphosis could Pythagoras have desired! How Ovid and Horace exulted in anticipating theirs! And how the world have justified their exultation! They had a right to triumph over brass and marble. It is the only visible change which changes no further; which generates, and yet is not destroyed. Consider : mines themselves are exhausted; cities perish; kingdoms are swept away, and man weeps with indignation to think that his own body is not immortal.

Yet this little body of thought that lies before me in the shape of a book has existed thousands of years; nor since the invention of the press, can any thing short of an universal convulsion of nature, abolish it. To a shape like this, so small, yet so comprehensive, so slight, yet so lasting, so insignificant, yet so venerable, turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the placid sage of Academus: to a shape like this the grandeur of Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the compressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together

"The assembled souls of all that men held wise."