of a book are as sure an opiate as the petals of the poppy, the symbol of that god. Indeed, we have known those who regularly take a book to bed with them every night, as a shoe-horn to pull on sleep with." Indeed, we have seen a whole family, each with a book in hand, to which he seemed to be bowing in devotion, except one bright young girl, who archly sung "We are all noddin', nid, nid, noddin'; We are all noddin' at our house at home." On the supposition that you propose to yourself the true end of reading, and are ready to adopt the appropriate means to arrive at it, you will take care to understand your author thoroughly. A vague and general impression is not sufficient. You must bestow the whole vigour of your attention on the words, the phrases, the periods, the paragraphs. If, at the first perusal, you do not understand a passage, peruse it a second or a third time. If you then fail in discovering its meaning, mark it for examination after you have read the book through. When you can do it, be careful to furnish yourself with every necessary help in books of reference such as dictionaries, general, classical, and biographical works on sacred and profane antiquities, geography, and chronology. If a word occurs whose meaning you do not know, be careful to refer to your dictionary, even though it may for a moment interrupt the course of the narrative or the argument. If you meet with an allusion to a fact with which you are unacquainted, immediately turn to your book of reference for the necessary information. For instance, you meet for the first time with the phrase, ultima thule, in a sentence like this: "In that science, he reached the ultima thule of discovery.' Instead of guessing at the import of the phrase, carefully ascertain the meaning, once for all. Again, you meet for the first time with an allusion to the bow of Ulysses, in a sentence like this: "He cannot bend the bow of Ulysses." Instead of being satisfied with a conjecture, read the story of the suitors of Penelope, who were put to the test of bending the bow of that hero, her husband, and you will understand the point of the allusion. But you say that this is a very slow and tedious way of reading. Slow it may be, but not tedious, because your curiosity is constantly awakened and constantly gratified. It is not tedious, any more than it is, in travelling through a country, to take time to examine the most grand and beautiful objects in nature and art. Instead of being tedious, it is the only way of becoming deeply interested in any highly intellectual and finished work. It is the only way in which you can transfer the views of your author to your own mind, and transfuse his spirit to your own soul. And as to slowness, you may, on this subject, adopt the adage, "The more haste the worst speed.' You proceed more slowly in the first part of your course, in order that you may make the greater speed in the end. Interruptions will become fewer and fewer as you advance. But you say that you can understand what you read without all this trouble. Perhaps you can; and perhaps the reason is, that you read those ephemeral productions that require as little labour to read them as it did to write them. In order thoroughly to understand a work it is frequently necessary to read it a second or even a third time. One of the first scholars of the age said that "he read Demosthenes three times before the beauties of that divine author began to appear." One part of a work throws light upon another part. After you have read the conclusion of a work, you can better understand the commencement. Lest I should myself fail of being understood, I will adduce one or two more instances. Suppose that you should, in conversation, use the word water in the hearing of two persons, the one a child of six years, and the other an accomplished chemist. Ask the child if he understands what is meant by the word, and he will promptly say: 'Oh! yes.' And yet how inadequate is the meaning of the word as it stands in his mind, compared with that which stands in the mind of the other, who is acquainted with that substance in its elements and combinations! Take another instance. Read the lines of Pope, descriptive of creative power, in the hearing of two persons, one of whom has and the other has not reflected on the subject to which it relates: "Builds life on death, on change duration founds, And bids the eternal wheels to know their rounds." To the one, these lines may be little more than mere words. To the other, they are full of meaning. In them, he sees the earth's face renewed by the breath of the Almighty, and nature for ever changing, yet the same for ever, like the phoenix, springing up into the beauty of the present out of the ashes of the past. Take another instance: You are to gaze upon each part and on the whole as you would upon the picture of it on canvas, or as you would upon the original scene itself, looking, one while, upon the glittering ice-mountain springing from the shore far into the upper sky, piercing the clouds with its hoary head, and supporting, like another Atlas, the heavens; and then looking at the sun fast struggling above the edge of the far-off southern horizon, sending along the intervening ocean his level, ineffectual rays; and then at the lightnings, the "dread arrows of the clouds," glancing off from the unscathed brow of the giant mountain. In the dawn of our intellectual existence, before bad mental habits are formed, we adopt the true mode of gaining knowledge. The child, when a new object is presented, gives up the whole of its little mind to its examination. He gazes at it with intense interest, carefully surveying every part. He applies all his senses, so far as he can, to its examination, when it is within his reach. And so strong is his curiosity, that he will break to pieces what he values, in order to discover its properties. In this way he transfers to his mind a distinct and full image of the admired object, which, in the absence of that object, he can gaze upon, in his contemplations, with the same interest that he could upon the object itself, if it were present to the bodily eye. These images, thus carefully formed in early life by the faculty of conception, under the guiding influence of nature, continue distinct and beautiful in the faithful keeping of memory, uninjured by time. In this way, it happens that the young ideas, which, under the teachings of nature, shoot forth from the soul in the spring-time of life, are perennial plants, continuing beautiful in leaf and in flower under the summer's sun of manhood and in the winter of old age. And when I speak of understanding a work, I do not refer merely to pure intellect, but to all the faculties that are addressed by the work. Sometimes a subject is presented in the "dry light" of the intellect; and sometimes, to use another expression of Bacon, it is "drenched in the affections." In the one case, the intellect of the reader is put in requisition; in the other, his affections likewise. For, instance, Samuel Clarke, whom Voltaire called a "reasoning machine," writes a book which can be understood by that reader only who, in the perusal, exerts his reasoning faculty. Another author writes a work under the guidance of his heart, and no one can thoroughly understand it whose heart has not given a lesson to his head. Milton, on the seraph wings of ecstasy, passed the flaming bounds of space and time; and who can follow him, without the aid of imagination, up to the living throne and the sapphire blaze? While different writers, in this way, exhibit a predominance of different faculties, it likewise is evident that no reader can fully enter into the spirit of a work, who does not, in the perusal of it, exert that faculty which is predominant in the author. Indeed, for fully understanding a writer and thoroughly entering into his spirit, it is necessary for you to give yourself up wholly into his hands, to put yourself in the same state of mind, when you read, that he was when he wrote. You are in this way to go through the letter into the spirit. Qui paret in litera, paret in cortice. At the same time you are to bestow your attention upon the language which an author employs to embody his thoughts, as well for the purpose of learning what those thoughts are, as for being able to embody your own thoughts when you shall address others. As language is the medium of thought, it is as necessary to understand the nature of that medium, as it is to understand the nature of the medium through which you see objects with the bodily eye. In dioptrics, you know that if you view an object through one glass, it will appear magnified; and through another, it will appear diminished; and through another, it will appear distorted; and through a fourth, it will appear coloured; and through a fifth, it will appear just as it is, in form and size and colour. The same is true of language in modifying thought. Five men will present the same thought in five different From the teachings of instinct in early life, reason should learn a lesson to be applied in maturer years. True, the objects that we examine through the medium of words and sentences are often intellectual, not sensible. But in order to become intimately acquainted with them, there must be the same eager and thorough observation, the same deep emotion, the same curiosity, which the child exhibits. Indeed, the distinct perception and full comprehension of abstract ideas, seen through the dispersive and refractive medium of language, require superior concentration of attention, full earnestness of curiosity, and the quickening influence of emotion. If, ways. on the other hand, there is no curiosity felt, no interest excited, and no vigour of attention, it is all in vain that the eye traces the words on the page. But you say that you get ideas in this superficial way. So you may, but they are ideas of words, not of things. You may get ideas by reading the naked columns of a spelling-book, but not connected thought. When I speak of understanding a work, I do not refer merely to the words themselves in their lexical signification, but to their relations in sentences, in paragraphs, in chapters, in the whole, in its general drift and scope. One will elevate it, another degrade it, a third distort it, a fourth colour it, and a fifth employ such appropriate language that the reader, at the first view, sees it just as it is. If you will carefully observe how good authors express themselves, you will from them obtain such command of language, that, whenever you have a thought to express, words, like "nimble servitors, will come to their places" at your bidding. I know that some have affected to underrate the knowledge of language in comparison with the knowledge of things. True, there is a difference between an idea and the expression of it; and in order to express it, you must first have it. But men who are to have intercourse with their fellow-men, and who are to influence them by means of knowledge, must embody their knowledge in language, otherwise they have no instruments by which to work. There are thoughts which, sometimes in happy moments of inspiration, dart through the mind with the brightness of electric fires. In that brightness we behold, as with a prophet's pen, the secrets of the world unknown, revealed to us as through the parting cloud. But as they come, so they go, like lightning. The clouds come together again, and our pathway becomes dark as before. Could we but arrest these flashes of thought and make them permanent in their radiance, they would serve to guide and cheer, and not merely to dazzle. This it is the office of language to do. There are "men endowed with highest gifts, the vision and the faculty divine," yet wanting the accomplishment of words-men "who live out their time," "and go to the grave unthought of." "To give solidity and permanence to the inspiration of genius, two things are especially necessary. First, that the idea to be communicated should be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or writer; and next, that he should employ words and phrases which convey it in all its truth to another." A man who entertains such conceptions will fail, unless suitable words wait upon his thoughts. Language has been fitly called a vast labyrinth. The man who has not the clue must wander in its mazes. In your reading, mark the meaning of the words and phrases employed by your author. Carefully associate language with your thoughts, so that thought and language shall become one in your mind. Beside understanding the views of an author, and the language in which his views are conveyed, you must understand the subjects upon which he writes. It is one thing to learn what an author thinks of a subject, and another to learn what is true of that subject. Hear what subject: authors to truth and certainty. This, young beginners should be entered in and shown the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men's studies. But I would add, this way of thinking on and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub only in the beginning. And to those that aim at knowledge I may say, that he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will sooner be at his journey's end than he that runs after every one he meets, though he gallop all day, full speed." ledge," and therefore is to be mainly sought. In other in what you read in the light of your own observaBesides this, you can sometimes examine tion. If you are reading some description of external nature, you can limit, correct, or extend the views presented by others, from your own scientific or political, whether they are found in observation; and this, too, whether those are When you read some work on human life and Paley's " Theology," or Thomson's "Seasons." manners, as Addison's "Spectator," or Franklin's "Essays," you are to cast your eyes around Locke, the great master of reason, says on this upon the forms of life and manners with which you are acquainted, to discover whether these great moral painters are, in the outlines and colouring of their pictures, true to the original. If you are reading some work on the human mind, you are constantly to watch the working of your own mind, that you may see whether the principles which your author advocates are in accordance with your own consciousness. If you are perusing some historical or political work, inquire whether the writer was a candid man, whether he leaned to a particular theory or party, and in this way learn to make the necessary allowance for his prepossessions and prejudices. To arrive at truths on litigated points, it may be necessary to read both sides. ours. "Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read We are of the ruminating species, and it is not anough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. All that is found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be built on. The mind of the reader is often backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to its original, to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives one man so much advantage over another in reading. The mind should, by severe rules, be tied down to this at first uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility, so that those who are accustomed to it readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the argument, and presently in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key to books, and the clue to lead hem through the mismaze of variety of opinions and 1 In order to profit from reading, it is advantageous to converse with those who have read the same books, or are interested in the same topics. Two persons of equal capacity shall read the same book, and yet receive from it very different impressions. By exchanging their views in the commerce of thought, each is a gainer. The difficulties which one meets with are solved by the other, and the truths upon which they agree are more firmly fixed in the minds of each. By thus bringing their minds in contact with each other, in conversation upon the work, their feelings are warmed into more vigorous exercise, and by the collision of their opinions the light of truth is struck out. Moreover, by conversing concerning the books that you read with those that are older and have read more than your selves, and have had better opportunities for observation, you will be the better able to form a correct estimate of what you read. Their experience will help to guard you against the errors and evil tendencies of the work, or enable you to appreciate its excellences. If you will adopt the practice, so far as the courtesies of life will allow, of discussing the various subjects which you meet with in your reading, you will always be furnished with interesting and useful topics of conversation, which will render you an acceptable visitor with the select sober few or the gayer circle. In the "feast of reason and the flow of soul," you can spend your social interviews, avoiding the error, on the one hand, of sitting in silence because you have nothing to say on the topics under discussion, and the greater evil, on the other, of saying an "infinite deal of nothing." deficiencies and excellences, as well as those of your author. With respect to the practice of making extracts of passages that you admire, either on account of beauty of expression or correctness of thought, I cannot speak with so much confidence. I see not why those who labour in the mines of literature may not with advantage arrange the gems of thought, as in a cabinet, as specimens of what is true and beautiful. It should constantly be remembered that the end of reading is to furnish nourishment to the mind, that it may grow into the full greatness and vigour of which it is susceptible. But the mind grows, like the body, by expansion from within; and not like a crystal, by accretion from without. Now in order to obtain nourishment from what you read, the mind itself must decompose what is received into it, in order that assimilation may take place. While what you read remains a mere undigested mass in the memory, it is of but little worth. Rumination is indispensable. And here I may with advantage quote the example of a distinguished American scholar. "1. Before I commenced an author, I made myself thoroughly master of the whole scheme of his work, if a table of contents enabled me to do so. Another practice to be attended to, in order "2. I then studied the author in the following to profit by your reading, is, to use your pen as manner: After reading the first sentence, I an instrument of thought. When you are read-meditated on it, developing the author's ing a work, it is profitable to take notes of what is true and beautiful in thought or expression on the one hand, and likewise of passages that are erroneous or ungraceful, that you may be able to refer to them, at pleasure. This will help to form the mental habit of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, beauty and deformity. thoughts as well as I was able, and reducing the whole, as nearly as possible, to a single distinct concise expression. I then read the second sentence, and did the same. I next compared the two sentences together, meditating on them, and gathering out of them their substance. Thus I went through the paragraph, and reflected on the whole until I had reduced it to a single senIn some cases, it may be well to take an ab- tence, containing its essence. I then studied stract or make an analysis of the work. In the next paragraph in like manner; and having others, it may be better to write short comments, compared the two, I gathered out of them their in the way of refuting what is false, and clearing substance. The same plan was followed in the up what is obscure, and confirming what is comparison of sections with sections, and chaptrue. In expressing the thoughts of your au- ters with chapters, books with books, until the thor in your own language, and in connection author was finished. with your own views, you will receive a benefit like that which you gain in translating from another language, in the distinctness and permanency of your impressions. You will be furnishing yourselves, for the future, with the history of your mental progress. Coleridge was so much in the habit of doing this, that his friends were anxious to lend him books, that he might write notes in the margin. So much was President Edwards in the habit of using his pen as an instrument of thought, that it might be said of him, "Nil sine calamo." Of course I shall be understood as referring to those works only that are worth a careful perusal. It is useful sometimes to place before you some admired passage of some standard author, and translate, if I may use the term, the thoughts contained in it into your own language. In this way, by comparing the original and the translation, you can see accurately your own "3. A third rule was to pass nothing unexamined, nothing without reflection, whether in poetry or fiction, history or travels, politics, philosophy, or religion." Nor ought I to omit the three rules of Professor Whittaker, of Cambridge, given to John Boyse, one of the eminent translators of the Bible in the time of James the First. 1. To study chiefly standing or walking. 2. Never to study at a window. 3. Not to go to bed, on any account, with cold feet. Thus much for the manner of reading. I now proceed to answer the fourth question, namely, WHAT BOOKS SHOULD BE READ? The time was when this question, if asked by one who intended to be a scholar, might be answered, All. Books were few, and every learned man was expected to read every book to which he could gain access. Even some time after the art of printing was invented, an industrious scholar might be expected to read every book that had been put to press. But with the improvements in mechanical arts connected with printing, at the present rate of increase, at no distant period the world itself, in the language of an authorized hyperbole, cannot contain the books that are printed. If the youthful student visits some large library in an athenæum or a college, or reads over the catalogues of these libraries, or looks into a fashionable periodical review, he finds a great many standard works, and a great many new works, each lauded to the skies, as the offspring of genius. The press, urged on by the power of steam, is as prolific as Berecynthia, the fabled mother of the gods; and like hers too, if he may credit the voice of flattery at every new birth, all its offspring are immortal. Besides the attractions of splendid binding and typography, the power of the pencil and the graver have been summoned to furnish designs to enliven dulness or grace the creations of genius. At his first introduction to these delights of learning in some favoured spot, he may, if his is a poetical temperament, fancy that he has found the home of all the Muses, and that each of those brighteyed daughters of Jove is contending for his favour, as did the three goddesses on Mount Ida for that of Paris. In this multitude of books, as no one can read all, evidently every judicious person must go on the principle of selection. "Some books," says Bacon, "are to be tasted, others are to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." It is only the "few" that are to be chewed and digested. It is only the standard works that should be anxiously sought and carefully read, though others may be occasionally tasted. While the mind is in the forming state, such books should be read as are adapted to form it to admire virtue, truth, and beauty. When formed, it may gather truth from every part of the fields of literature, as the bee gathers honey even from poisonous flowers. The youthful student should fix his intense regards upon standard works, and bestow only a passing notice on those ephemeral productions which fall from the press upon the current of literature, "thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks of Vallambrosa," Their name is legion. They meet you in the book-stalls, in steamboats, in railway carriages. "The dog-star rages, now 'tis past a doubt, In the fashionable literature, or the "yellowcovered literature," as it has been called, a bad spirit reigns, or rather all spirits congregate, "black spirits and grey." In one of these works is found the spirit of infidelity, "squat like a toad," undetected unless touched by the spear of Ithuriel, yet doing its work surely. In another, immorality multiform lurks. Every fiend nestles among those books in disguise. There, breathing revenge, is Moloch, "the strongest and fiercest spirit that fought in heaven." There, in his beauty, is Belial, whose "tongue drops manna, and can make the worse appear the better reason; but to noble deeds timorous and slothful." There, gloating over his gold, sits Mammon. Exposed to such malign influences, it is not strange that many a youthful reader should become the victim of infidelity and vice, as they thus ambush his path. There is a practice that prevails among youthful readers in colleges and elsewhere, of reading everything that comes to hand. They make haste to be wise, and think that wisdom consists in having read everything that comes in their way. They are almost as rapid in their course of reading as a certain coxcomb who boasted that he had read Euclid's "Elements of Geometry' in one afternoon, only leaving out the A's and the B's, and the crooked lines, which seemed intended merely to retard his progress. Bookworms they might be called, were not bookbutterflies the more appropriate term. They skim over the meadows of learning, alighting for a moment on the flowers, but collecting nothing valuable. But you say that the rule which I have given you of reading standard books is not sufficiently definite, inasmuch as the number of standard books is so great that one could hardly expect to read them all in a long life, much less in the leisure hours from his studies while in the school, the academy, the office, the workshop, or the counting-house. You ask me what particular books you should read. In reply, I would say: Tell me what are your mental defects, and I will tell you what books will help to remove them. Are you deficient in taste? Read the best poets, such as Gray and Goldsmith, Pope and Thomson, Cowper and Coleridge, Scott and Wordsworth. Are you deficient in imagination? Read Milton, and Akenside, and Burke. Are you deficient in power of reason? Chillingworth, and Bacon, and Locke. Read Are you deficient in judgment and good sense in the common affairs of life? Read Franklin. Are you deficient in sensibility? Read Goëthe and Mackenzie. Are you deficient in vigour of style? Read Junius and Fox. Are you deficient in political knowledge? Read Montesquieu. Are you deficient in patriotism? Read Demosthenes, and the "Life of Washington." Are you deficient in conscience? Read some of President Edwards 'works. Are you deficient in piety? Read the Bible. This I give you as a sort of specimen list. For a number of these works, others equally good for the purpose can be substituted. Without a reference to the principle which lies at the basis of this rule, reading, besides being a waste |