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"While this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close us in," and while custom lies upon us with a weight heavy as frost, and deep almost as life, it is hard for us to behold

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We are so immersed in the life of the senses, so cheated by the shows of things, occupied by greetings in the market-place, trifles in the street, fashions of dress, the cut of a coat, the mode of a bonnet, the glitter of a brooch, the costume of a dude or belle; we give such time and attention to gossip of newspapers and society, that the eye becomes dull and we see not, the ear heavy and we hear not, and the soul forgets its nobleness-is defrauded of its heritage.

We delude ourselves that happiness is to be found, and only found, at the winning-post of life's race; that he alone can have it who gains the wager of the contest, is greeted by the applause of the onlooking throng, crowned with gilt or gold by the judges at the stand;-and so our life is heated, eager, passionate, spectacular. We like the haste and din of crowds, the shuffle of feet and clapping of hands; the ear loses its sense of harmony, and noise becomes music; the eye its discretion, and we mistake paste for diamonds, and fancy that gas-light is better than sunshine.

The world is too much with us, late and soon:
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers."

God deals with us as with sons, and the blows of affliction fall, not to punish, but correct. There is a vacant chair in every home; there are few hearts that have not known the discipline of sorrow; each one hath its own grief with which no stranger intermeddles. Silence and solitude are appointed to us for seasons, that they may do what the bustle and the crowd cannot; and they bid us open our minds and hearts to the ministry of healing, the consolation of higher influences, and persuade us that while on one side we are of the earth earthy, the children of Adam, the man of the red clay, on the other we are His brethren who is the Lord from Heaven. Religion, philosophy, science, the arts and letters, are friendly guides to lead us away from the dissipations and deceptions of the world, from the deceit and allurements of our own hearts to the palace of the Great King in whose courts and gardens we may find health, sanity, strength, and so come back to the working-day world as giants refreshed with new wine.

What power is found in books! A well-chosen library, though small and inexpensive, may introduce us to the best company the world has known, bring us upon terms of intimacy with the kingly spirits of our race, admit us to their confidence so that they tell us the secrets of their hearts, show us the weapons with which they

conquered the world and themselves, breathe upon us the spirit of their courage, enthusiasm, faith, hope and love; teach us the secret of their nobleness, heroism, divinity, until in the wrapt communion we grow into their manners, aims, achievements, and make them our own.

The value of a book depends upon the use we make of it; it is little worth except to the good reader. If its true office be performed for us we must eat, drink, digest, assimilate it so that its nourishment, becomes a part of our own being, recruiting our life with its intelligence, wisdom, inspiration.

When books were rare and costly, chained to columns in monasteries, borrowed with pledges that might have been the ransom of princes, men studied, devoured them, and so appropriated their virtue. Now, when books may be bought for a song, when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Wordsworth, may be had for the asking, we glance at, caress with compliments and pass them by as fish swim among pearls and know not of their value.

When Gen. Jackson, as President of the United States, gave year by year the series of state dinners at the White House, while his distinguished guests banqueted upon the countless dishes and courses, surfeiting their stomachs, addling their brains with the dainties and wines of an English dinner, the sturdy old host stuck to the simple fare, with the dessert of mush and milk, to which he had been used at the "Hermitage," and so kept his head and will, as well as stomach, inviolate; his guests departing with indigestion, often unable to recognize their own homes on reaching them.

Our intellectual feasts are in many courses, with wines of many vintages-liqueurs, cognac, absinthe, added: what wonder, then, that there is so much literary dyspepsia, apoplexy and paralysis? A wise man once said of an omniverous reader, "He read so much he came at last to know nothing." "A good book," said Milton, " is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life:" and he who by devout and constant reading of a few such will realize in his spirit all that is claimed for the transfusion of blood in the veins; recover him from disease, make the shrunken frame dilate, cause the languid eye and pallid cheek to glow and sparkle with the health of immortal youth, lend the voice the music and accents of courage and joy. Through well-chosen books we become heirs of the ages, and when the pencil of the artist and burin of the engraver embody in living form the writer's thought, we have the presence and the glory of a sacrament "an outward and visible form of an inward and spiritual grace." What pains and expense we are at, what dresses don, and ordeals undergo to gain access to the drawing-rooms of the great, to be presented to princes, to bow and curtsey to kings and queens, and, after all our toil and trouble, often feel in coming away that we have only looked at blocks with wigs on them. We sigh or struggle for invitations to balls and parties, and then learn to our cost that patés, terrapin and champagne apologize to the stomach for the absence of

wit and wisdom we hoped to find; and that the proper legend for the entertainment would be, "Panorama of a caravan wandering through the Desert of Sahara." But good books never cheat us thus: they are "a perpetual feast where no crude surfeit reigns;" not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute." We can apply to them with justice Wordsworth's lines on the Ministry of Nature:

"Oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart:
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration; feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love: nor le-s, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime: that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened:-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

Homer's Iliad wrought itself into the soul of Alexander, and became the brain and sword with which he conquered the world. A young man walking one day on the river's bank saw something floating in the current, drew it ashore, found i to be a parchment Bible which had been thrown into the flood by command of the apostate Emperor Julian. The youth dried the volume, read it until its contents took possession of him, winning him from the study of Greek Philosophy, and he became the Golden-mouthed" John of Antioch, afterwards Archbishop of Constantinople, known to the world as St. John Chrysostom, the most powerful preacher the East has known since the days of St. Paul. A young African, who had run a course of intellectual and animal excess, paced to and fro, one pleasant summer afternoon, in a Roman garden, and heard a child in the next garden reading aloud; he paused to listen, heard words which took hold of his conscience and heart, for they were words of the Holy Scriptures. He got the book and studied it, and

became the most renowned Doctor and Father of the Christian Church-St. Augustine. But why multiply instances of the power of books.

In presenting you this volume, the publishers have spared neither pains nor expense to make it as nearly perfect as a volume of the kind can be.

The admirable selection from the writers of our tongue, ranges from Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare, to our own Hayne, Aldrich and Gilder, and includes pieces well known as household words, and others not easily reached except in these pages.

Of the illustrations a blind man is not competent to speak, but I doubt not they are most excellent, and will help to convey and impress the meaning of the writers.

If the men and women, young or old, into whose hands this book may come, will "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" its contents until each day "memory have its fraught," they will find it a treasure beyond price, attuning the ear to the melodies of our noble speech, refining the taste, purging the eye to behold the things most real but invisible to mortal sense, informing the mind with "thoughts that wander through eternity," and storing the recollection with truths and images which cannot die; making them to hear

"Oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue, and they may feel
A presence that disturbs them with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things."

Sir Richard Steele's famous compliment may have a new application when I say, to have it will be a liberal education.

WASHINGTON, April, 1886.

W. H. MILBURN.

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