centuries ago upon their margins or blank pages suggest strange surmises as to the fate of those who bore them; and the vices or virtues, the weal or the wo, of their deceased authors, seem to cluster round, or to flash out, from the dumb volumes, and to stir the leaves with "airs from heaven or blasts from hell." It is the daydream of a strange but holy soul. And turning round from his books, how closely does he grapple in a series of interrogations with the hearts and consciences of his readers! It is like a spirit talking to us of eternity, over the mouth of the grave, and by the light of a waning moon. How strict yet tender the questionings! -Gallery of Literary Portraits:›“John Foster.”

Let us read good works often over. Some skip from volume to volume, touching on all points, resting on none. We hold, on the contrary, that, if a book be worth reading once, it is worth reading twice, and that if it stands a second reading, it may stand a third. This, indeed, is one great test of the excellence of books. Many books require to be read more than once, in order to be seen in their proper colours and latent glories, and dim discovered truths will by and by disclose themselves. The writings of Foster, the essayist, and William Hazlitt belong to this class. Their mood of thinking and writing is, at first sight, very peculiar, and almost repulsive; but then there is such a vast fund of original and acute remark in their writings that you can refer to them again and again, and have no more fear of exhausting their riches than of emptying the ocean. Again, let us read thoughtfully; this is a great secret in the right use of books.

Not lazily, to mumble, like the dogs in the siege of Corinth, as dead bones, the words of the author,-not slavishly to assent to his every word, and cry Amen to to his every conclusion,—not to read him as an officer his general's orders,—but to read him with suspicion, with inquiry, with a free exercise of your own faculties, with the admiration of intelligence, and not with the wonder of ignorance,-that is the proper and profitable way of reading the great authors of your native tongue. Address to the Members of a Literary Institute.

How still and peaceful is a Library! It seems quiet as the grave, tranquil as heaven, a cool collection of the thoughts of the men of all times. And yet, approach and open the pages, and you find them full of dissension and disputes, alive with abuse and detraction—a huge, many-volumed satire upon man, written by himself. What a broad thing is a library -all shades of opinion reflected on its catholic bosom, as the sunbeams and shadows of a summer's day upon the ample mirror of a lake. Jean Paul was always melancholy in a large library, because it reminded him of his ignorance.-Sketches, Literary and Theological.

HENRY WARD BEECHER. b. 1813 [Living].

We form judgments of men from little things about their houses, of which the owner, perhaps, never thinks In earlier years when travelling in the West, where taverns were scarce, and in some places unknown, and every settler's house was a house of entertainment, it

And we

was a matter of some importance and some experience to select wisely where you should put up. always looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, no patch of flowers in the yard, we were suspicious of the place. But no matter how rude the cabin, or rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window held a little trough for flowers, and that some vines twined about strings let down from the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log cabin. In a new country, where people have to tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty strong; and this taste, blossoming out of plain and uncultivated people, is itself a clump of harebells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were seldom misled. A

patch of flowers came to signify kind people, clean

beds, and good bread.

But in other states of society
Flowers about a rich

other signs are more significant.
man's house may signify only that he has a good
gardener, or that he has refined neighbours, and does
what he sees them do.

But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in slender means we find that he contents himself with cheap carpets and very plain furniture in order that he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved étagère or sideboard. Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture.

Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend's house, and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting on luxuriant chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind. Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything but what the soul needs? We know of many, and many a rich man's house, where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English Classics. A few garish Annuals on the table, a few pictorial monstrosities together with the stock religious books of his "persuasion," and that is all! No poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels or biographies,—no select fiction or curious legendary lore. But the wall paper cost three dollars a roll, and the carpet cost four dollars a yard!

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses! Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the

price which his tobacco and his beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and, indeed, among all that are struggling up in life from nothing to something, is that of forming and continually adding to a library of good books. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.-Sermons.

SARA P. PARTON (FANNY FERN).
b. 1814, d. ?

Oh! but books are such safe company! They keep your Secrets well; they never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. You may take up your favourite Author, and love him at a distance just as warmly as you like, for all the sweet fancies and glowing thoughts that have winged your lonely hours so fleetly and so sweetly. Then you may close the book, and lean your cheek against the cover, as if it were the face of a dear friend; shut your eyes and soliloquise to your heart's content, without fear of misconstruction, even though you should exclaim in the fulness of your enthusiasm, "What an adorable soul that man has!" You may put the volume under your pillow, and let your eye and the first ray of morning light fall on it together, and nothing shall rob you of that delicious pleasure. You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to