The Art of Reading.
"The true University of these days," says a great scholar of our century, Thomas Carlyle, "is a collection of books, and all education is to teach us how to read."
If there were any volume, out of the multitude of books about books that have been written, which could illuminate the pathway of the unskilled reader, so as to guide him into all knowledge by the shortest road, what a boon that book would be!
When we survey the vast and rapidly growing product of the modern press,—when we see these hosts of poets without imagination, historians without accuracy, critics without discernment, and novelists without invention or style, in short, the whole prolific brood of writers who do not know how to write,—we are tempted to echo the sentiment of Wordsworth:—
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Goes sounding on a dim and perilous way."
The most that any one can hope to do for others is to suggest to them a clue which, however feeble, has helped to guide his uncertain footsteps through the labyrinthian maze of folly and wisdom which we call literature.
The knowledge acquired by a Librarian, while it may be very wide and very varied, runs much risk of being as superficial as it is diversified. There is a very prevalent, but very erroneous notion which conceives of a librarian as a kind of animated encyclopaedia, who, if you tap him in any direction, from A to Z, will straightway pour forth a flood of knowledge upon any subject in history, science, or literature. This popular ideal, however fine in theory, has to undergo what commercial men call a heavy discount when reduced to practice. The librarian is a constant and busy worker in far other fields than exploring the contents of books. His day is filled with cataloguing, arranging and classifying them, searching catalogues, selecting new books, correspondence, directing assistants, keeping library records, adjusting accounts, etc., in the midst of which he is constantly at the call of the public for books and information. What time has he, wearied by the day's multifarious and exacting labors, for any thorough study of books? So, when anyone begins an inquiry with, "You know everything; can you tell me,"—I say: "Stop a moment; omniscience is not a human quality; I really know very few things, and am not quite sure of some of them." There are many men, and women, too, in almost every community, whose range of knowledge is more extended than that of most librarians.
The idea, then, that because one lives perpetually among books, he absorbs all the learning that they contain, must be abandoned as a popular delusion. To know a little upon many subjects is quite compatible with not knowing much about any one. "Beware of the man of one book," is an ancient proverb, pregnant with meaning. The man of one book, if it is wisely chosen, and if he knows it all, can sometimes confound a whole assembly of scholars. An American poet once declared to me that all leisure time is lost that is not spent in reading Shakespeare. And we remember Emerson's panegyric upon Plato's writings, borrowing from the Caliph Omar his famous (but apocryphal) sentence against all books but the Koran: "Burn all the libraries, for their value is in this book." So Sheffield, duke of Buckingham:
"Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so tame, so poor,
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need."
Of course I am far from designing to say anything against the widest study, which great libraries exist to supply and to encourage; and all utterances of a half-truth, like the maxim I have quoted, are exaggerations. But the saying points a moral—and that is, the supreme importance of thoroughness in all that we undertake. The poetical wiseacre who endowed the world with the maxim, "A little learning is a dangerous thing," does not appear to have reflected upon the logical sequence of the dictum, namely: that if a little learning upon any subject is dangerous, then less must be still more dangerous.
The art of reading to the best advantage implies the command of adequate time to read. The art of having time to read depends upon knowing how to make the best use of our days. Days are short, and time is fleeting, but no one's day ever holds less than 24 hours. Engrossing as one's occupation may be, it need never consume all the time remaining from sleep, refreshment and social intercourse. The half hour before breakfast, the fifteen minutes waiting for dinner, given to the book you wish to read, will soon finish it, and make room for another. The busiest men I have known have often been the most intelligent, and the widest readers. The idle person never knows how to make use of odd moments; the busy one always knows how. Yet the vast majority of people go through life without ever learning the great lesson of the supreme value of moments.
Let us suppose that you determine to devote two hours every day to reading. That is equivalent to more than seven hundred hours a year, or to three months of working time of eight hours a day. What could you not do in three months, if you had all the time to yourself? You could almost learn a new language, or master a new science; yet this two hours a day, which would give you three months of free time every year, is frittered away, you scarcely know how, in aimless matters that lead to nothing.
A famous writer of our century, some of whose books you have read,—Edward Bulwer Lytton,—devoted only four hours a day to writing; yet he produced more than sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and criticism, of singular literary merit. The great naturalist, Darwin, a chronic sufferer from a depressing malady, counted two hours a fortunate day's work for him; yet he accomplished results in the world of science which render his name immortal.
Be not over particular as to hours, or the time of day, and you will soon find that all hours are good for the muse. Have a purpose, and adhere to it with good-humored pertinacity. Be independent of the advice and opinions of others; the world of books, like the world of nature, was made for you; possess it in your own way. If you find no good in ancient history or in metaphysics, let them alone and read books of art, or poetry, or biography, or voyages and travels. The wide domain of knowledge and the world of books are so related, that all roads cross and converge, like the paths that carry us over the surface of the globe on which we live. Many a reader has learned more of past times from good biographies, than from any formal history; and it is a fact that many owe to the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the knowledge which they possess of the history of England and Scotland.
It is unhappily true that books do not teach the use of books. The art of extracting what is important or instructive in any book, from the mass of verbiage that commonly overlays it, cannot be learned by theory. Invaluable as the art of reading is, as a means of enlightenment, its highest uses can only be obtained by a certain method of reading, which will separate the wheat from the chaff. Different readers will, of course, possess different capacities for doing this. Young or undisciplined minds can read only in one way,—and that way is, to mentally pronounce every word, and dwell equally upon all the parts of every sentence. This comes naturally in the first instance, from the mere method of learning to read, in which every word is a spoken symbol, and has to be sounded, whether it is essential to the sense, or not. This habit of reading, which may be termed the literal method, goes with most persons through life. Once learned, it is very hard to unlearn. There are multitudes who cannot read a newspaper, even, without dwelling upon every word, and coming to a full stop at the end of every sentence. Now this method of reading, while it may be indispensable to all readers at some time, and to some readers at all times, is too slow and fruitless for the student who aims to absorb the largest amount of knowledge in the briefest space of time. Life is too short to be wasted over the rhetoric or the periods of an author whose knowledge we want as all that concerns us.
Doubtless there are classes of literature in which form or expression predominates, and we cannot read poetry, for example, or the drama, or even the higher class of fiction, without lingering upon the finer passages, to get the full impression of their beauty. In reading works of the imagination, we read not for ideas alone, but for expression also, and to enjoy the rhythm and melody of the verse, if it be poetry, or, if prose, the finished rhetoric, and the pleasing cadence of the style. It is here that the literary skill of an accomplished writer, and all that we understand by rhetoric, becomes important, while in reading for information only, we may either ignore words and phrases entirely, or subordinate them to the ideas which they convey. In reading any book for the knowledge it contains, I should as soon think of spelling out all the words, as of reading out all the sentences. Just as, in listening to a slow speaker, you divine the whole meaning of what he is about to say, before he has got half through his sentence, so, in reading, you can gather the full sense of the ideas which any sentence contains, without stopping to accentuate the words.
Leaving aside the purely literary works, in which form or style is a predominant element, let us come to books of science, history, biography, voyages, travels, etc. In these, the primal aim is to convey information, and thus the style of expression is little or nothing—the thought or the fact is all. Yet most writers envelop the thought or the fact in so much verbiage, complicate it with so many episodes, beat it out thin, by so much iteration and reiteration, that the student must needs learn the art of skipping, in self-defense. To one in zealous pursuit of knowledge, to read most books through is paying them too extravagant a compliment. He has to read between the lines, as it were, to note down a fact here, or a thought there, or an illustration elsewhere, and leaves alone all that contributes nothing to his special purpose. As the quick, practiced eye glances over the visible signs of thought, page after page is rapidly absorbed, and a book which would occupy an ordinary reader many days in reading, is mastered in a few hours.
The habit of reading which I have outlined, and which may be termed the intuitive method, or, if you prefer it, the short-hand method, will more than double the working power of the reader. It is not difficult to practice, especially to a busy man, who does with all his might what he has got to do. But it should be learned early in life, when the faculties are fresh, the mind full of zeal for knowledge, and the mental habits are ductile, not fixed. With it one's capacity for acquiring knowledge, and consequently his accomplishment, whether as writer, teacher, librarian, or private student, will be immeasureably increased.
Doubtless it is true that some native or intuitive gifts must be conjoined with much mental discipline and perseverance, in order to reach the highest result, in this method of reading, as in any other study. "Non omnia possumus omnes," Virgil says; and there are intellects who could no more master such a method, than they could understand the binomial theorem, or calculate the orbit of Uranus. If it be true, as has been epigramatically said, that "a great book is a great evil," let it be reduced to a small one by the skilful use of the art of skipping. Then, "he that runs may read" as he runs—while, without this refuge, he that reads will often assuredly be tempted to run.
What I said, just now, in deprecation of set courses of reading, was designed for private students only, who so often find a stereotyped sequence of books barren or uninteresting. It was not intended to discourage the pursuit of a special course of study in the school, or the society, or the reading class. This is, in fact, one of the best means of intellectual progress. Here, there is the opportunity to discuss the style, the merits, and the characteristics of the author in hand, and by the attrition of mind with mind, to inform and entertain the whole circle of readers. In an association of this kind, embracing one or two acute minds, the excellent practice of reading aloud finds its best results. Here, too, the art of expression becomes important, how to adapt the sound to the sense, by a just emphasis, intonation, and modulation of the voice. In short, the value of a book thus read and discussed, in an appreciative circle, may be more than doubled to each reader.
It is almost literally true that no book, undertaken merely as task work, ever helped the reader to knowledge of permanent or material value. How many persons, struck by Mr. Emerson's exalted praise of the writings of Plato, have undertaken to go through the Dialogues. Alas! for the vain ambition to be or to seem learned! After trying to understand the Phaedo, or falling asleep over the Gorgias, the book has been dropped as hastily as it was taken up. It was not perceived that in order to enjoy or comprehend a philosopher, one must have a capacity for ideas. It requires almost as much intelligence to appreciate an idea as to conceive one. One will bring nothing home from the most persistent cruise after knowledge, unless he carries something out. In the realm of learning, we recognize the full meaning of that Scripture, that to him that hath, shall be given; and he that hath not, though never so anxious to read and understand Plato, will quickly return to the perusal of his daily newspaper.
It were easier, perhaps, in one sense, to tell what not to read, than to recommend what is best worth reading. In the publishing world, this is the age of compilation, not of creation. If we seek for great original works, if we must go to the wholesale merchants to buy knowledge, since retail geniuses are worth but little, one must go back many years for his main selection of books. It would not be a bad rule for those who can read but little, to read no book until it has been published at least a year or two. This fever for the newest books is not a wholesome condition of the mind. And since a selection must indispensably be made, and that selection must be, for the great mass of readers, so rigid and so small, why should precious time be wasted upon the ephemeral productions of the hour? What business, for example, has one to be reading Rider Haggard, or Amélie Rives, or Ian Maclaren, who has never read Homer, or Dante, or even so much as half-a-dozen plays of Shakespeare?
One hears with dismay that about three-fourths of the books drawn from our popular libraries are novels. Now, while such aimless reading, merely to be amused, is doubtless better than no reading at all, it is unquestionably true that over-much reading of fiction, especially at an early age, enervates the mind, weakens the will, makes dreamers instead of thinkers and workers, and fills the imagination with morbid and unreal views of life. Yet the vast consumption of novels is due more to the cheapness and wide diffusion of such works, and the want of wise direction in other fields, than to any original tendency on the part of the young. People will always read the most, that which is most put before them, if only the style be attractive. The mischief that is done by improper books is literally immeasureable. The superabundance of cheap fictions in the markets creates and supplies an appetite which should be directed by wise guidance into more improving fields. A two-fold evil follows upon the reading of every unworthy book; in the first place, it absorbs the time which should be bestowed upon a worthy one; and secondly, it leaves the mind and heart unimproved, instead of conducing to the benefit of both. As there are few books more elevating than a really good novel, so there are none more fruitful of evil than a bad one.
And what of the newspaper? it may be asked. When I consider for how much really good literature we are beholden to the daily and weekly press, how indispensable is its function as purveyor of the news of the world, how widely it has been improved in recent years, I cannot advise quarreling with the bridge that brings so many across the gulf of ignorance. Yet the newspaper, like the book, is to be read sparingly, and with judgment. It is to be used, not abused. I call that an abuse which squanders the precious and unreturning hours over long chronicles of depravity. The murders, the suicides, the executions, the divorces, the criminal trials, are each and all so like one another that it is only a wanton waste of time to read them. The morbid style in which social disorders of all kinds are written up in the sensational press, with staring headlines to attract attention, ought to warn off every healthy mind from their perusal. Every scandal in society that can be brought to the surface is eagerly caught up and paraded, while the millions of people who lead blameless lives of course go unnoticed and unchronicled. Such journals thus inculcate the vilest pessimism, instead of a wholesome and honest belief in the average decency of human nature. The prolixity of the narrative, too, is always in monstrous disproportion to its importance. "Does not the burning of a metropolitan theatre," says a great writer, "take above a million times as much telling as the creation of a world?" Here is where the art of skipping is to be rigorously applied. Read the newspaper by headlines only,—skipping all the murders, all the fires, all the executions, all the crimes, all the news, except the most important and immediately interesting,—and you will spend perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes upon what would otherwise occupy hours. It is no exaggeration to say that most persons have spent time enough over the newspapers, to have given them a liberal education.
As all readers cannot have the same gifts, so all cannot enjoy the same books. There are those who can see no greatness in Shakespeare, but who think Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy sublime. Some will eagerly devour every novel of Miss Braddon's, or "The Duchess," or the woman calling herself "Ouida," but they cannot appreciate the masterly fictions of Thackeray. I have known very good people who could not, for the life of them, find any humor in Dickens, but who actually enjoyed the strained wit of Mrs. Partington and Bill Nye. Readers who could not get through a volume of Gibbon will read with admiration a so-called History of Napoleon by Abbott. And I fear that you will find many a young lady of to-day, who is content to be ignorant of Homer and Shakespeare, but who is ravished by the charms of "Trilby" or the "Heavenly Twins." But taste in literature, as in art, or in anything else, can be cultivated. Lay down the rule, and adhere to it, to read none but the best books, and you will soon lose all relish for the poor ones. You can educate readers into good judges, in no long time, by feeding them on the masterpieces of English prose and poetry. Surely, we all have cause to deprecate the remorseless flood of fictitious literature in which better books are drowned.
Be not dismayed at the vast multitude of books, nor fear that, with your small leisure, you will never be able to master any appreciable share of them. Few and far between are the great books of the world. The works which it is necessary to know, may be comprised in a comparatively small compass. The rest are to be preserved in the great literary conservatories, some as records of the past, others as chronicles of the times, and not a few as models to be avoided. The Congressional Library at Washington is our great National conservatory of books. As the library of the government—that is, of the whole people,—it is inclusive of all the literature which the country produces, while all the other libraries are and must be more or less exclusive. No National Library can ever be too large. In order that the completeness of the collection shall not fail, and to preserve the whole of our literature, it is put into the Statute of Copyright, as a condition precedent of the exclusive right to multiply copies of any book, that it shall be deposited in the Library of Congress. Apprehension is sometimes expressed that our National Library will become overloaded with trash, and so fail of its usefulness. 'Tis a lost fear. There is no act of Congress requiring all the books to be read. The public sense is continually winnowing and sifting the literature of every period, and to books and their authors, every day is the day of judgment. Nowhere in the world is the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest more rigidly applied than in the world of books. The works which are the most frequently re-printed in successive ages are the ones which it is safe to stand by.
Books may be divided into three classes: 1st, acquaintances; 2d, friends; and 3d, intimates.
It is well enough to have an acquaintance with a multitude of books, as with many people; though in either case much time should not be given to merely pleasant intercourse, that leads to no result. With our literary friends, we can spend more time, for they awaken keen interest, and are to be read with zest, and consequently with profit. But for our chosen intimates, our heart-companions, we reserve our highest regard, and our best hours. Choice and sacred is the book that makes an era in the life of the reader; the book which first rouses his higher nature, and awakens the reason or the imagination. Such a volume will many a one remember; the book which first excited his own thought, made him conscious of untried powers, and opened to his charmed vision a new world.
Such a book has Carlyle's Sartor Resartus been to many; or the play of Hamlet, read for the first time; or the Faust of Goethe; or the Confessions of St. Augustine; or an essay of Emerson; or John Ruskin; or the Divine Comedy of Dante; or even an exquisite work of fiction, like John Halifax, or Henry Esmond. What the book is that works such miracles is never of so much importance as the epoch in the mind of the reader which it signalizes. It were vain to single out any one writer, and say to all readers—"Here is the book that must indispensably be read;" for the same book will have totally different effects upon different minds, or even upon the same mind, at different stages of development.
When I have been asked to contribute to the once popular symposia upon "Books which have helped me,"—I have declined, for such catalogues of intellectual aids are liable to be very misleading. Thus, if I were to name the book which did more than most others for my own mind, I should say that it was the Emile of Rousseau, read at about the age of seventeen. This work, written with that marvellous eloquence which characterises all the best productions of Jean Jacques, first brought me acquainted with those advanced ideas of education which have penetrated the whole modern world. Yet the Emile would probably appear to most of my readers trite and common-place, as it would now to me, for the reason that we have long passed the period of development when its ideas were new to us.
But the formative power of books can never be over-rated: their subtle mastery to stimulate all the germs of intellectual and moral life that lie enfolded in the mind. As the poet sings—
"Books are not seldom talismans and spells."
Why should they not be so? They furnish us the means, and the only means, whereby we may hold communion with the master-spirits of all ages. They bring us acquainted with the best thoughts which the human mind has produced, expressed in the noblest language. Books create for us the many-sided world, carry us abroad, out of our narrow provincial horizons, and reveal to us new scenery, new men, new languages, and new modes of life. As we read, the mind expands with the horizon, and becomes broad as the blue heaven above us. With Homer, we breathe the fresh air of the pristine world, when the light of poetry gilded every mountain top, and peopled the earth with heroes and demigods. With Plutarch, we walk in company with sages, warriors, and statesmen, and kindle with admiration of their virtues, or are roused to indignation at their crimes. With Sophocles, we sound the depths of human passion, and learn the sublime lesson of endurance. We are charmed with an ode of Horace, perfect in rhythm, perfect in sentiment, perfect in diction, and perfect in moral; the condensed essence of volumes in a single page. We walk with Dante through the nether world, awed by the tremendous power with which he depicts for us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we mount heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor poems, finer even than the stately march of Paradise Lost, we hear celestial music, and breathe diviner air. With that sovereign artist, Shakespeare, full equally of delight and of majesty, we sweep the horizon of this complex human life, and become comprehensive scholars and citizens of the world. The masters of fiction enthrall us with their fascinating pages, one moment shaking us with uncontrollable laughter, and the next, dissolving us in tears. In the presence of all these emanations of genius, the wise reader may feed on nectar and ambrosia, and forget the petty cares and vexations of to-day.
There are some books that charm us by their wit or their sweetness, others that surprise and captivate us by their strength: books that refresh us when weary: books that comfort us when afflicted: books that stimulate us by their robust health: books that exalt and refine our natures, as it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the sound of a trumpet: books that illumine the darkest hours, and fill all our day with delight.
It is books that record the advance and the decline of nations, the experience of the world, the achievements and the possibilities of mankind. It is books that reveal to us ideas and images almost above ourselves, and go far to open for us the gates of the invisible. "A river of thought," says Emerson, "is continually flowing out of the invisible world into the mind of man:" and we may add that books contain the most fruitful and permanent of the currents of that mighty river.
I am not disposed to celebrate the praises of all books, nor to recommend to readers of any age a habit of indiscriminate reading: but for the books which are true helpers and teachers, the thoughts of the best poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, orators,—if their value is not real, then there are no realities in the world.
Very true is it, nevertheless, that the many-sided man cannot be cultivated by books alone. One may learn by heart whole libraries, and yet be profoundly unacquainted with the face of nature, or the life of man. The pale student who gives himself wholly to books pays the penalty by losing that robust energy of character, that sympathy with his kind, that keen sense of the charms of earth and sky, that are essential to complete development. "The world's great men," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "have not commonly been great scholars, nor its scholars great men." To know what other men have said about things is not always the most important part of knowledge. There is nothing that can dispense us from the independent use of our own faculties. Meditation and observation are more valuable than mere absorption; and knowledge itself is not wisdom. The true way to use books is to make them our servants—not our masters. Very helpful, cheering, and profitable will they become, when they fall naturally into our daily life and growth—when they tally with the moods of the mind.
The habits and methods of readers are as various as those of authors. Thus, there are some readers who gobble a book, as Boswell tells us Dr. Johnson used to gobble his dinner—eagerly, and with a furious appetite, suggestive of dyspepsia, and the non-assimilation of food. Then there are slow readers, who plod along through a book, sentence by sentence, putting in a mark conscientiously where they left off to-day, so as to begin at the self-same spot to-morrow; fast readers, who gallop through a book, as you would ride a flying bicycle on a race; drowsy readers, to whom a book is only a covert apology for a nap, and who pretend to be reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream between the leaves; sensitive readers, who cannot abide the least noise or interruption when reading, and to whose nerves a foot-fall or a conversation is an exquisite torture; absorbed readers, who are so pre-occupied with their pursuit that they forget all their surroundings—the time of day, the presence or the voices of others, the hour for dinner, and even their own existence; credulous readers, who believe everything they read because it is printed in a book, and swallow without winking the most colossal lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an idiot or an ass—and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages; admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of literature; reverent readers, who treat a book as they would treat a great and good man, considerately and politely, carefully brushing the dust from a beloved volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt harm; careless and rough readers, who will turn down books on their faces to keep the place, tumble them over in heaps, cram them into shelves never meant for them, scribble upon the margins, dogs-ear the leaves, or even cut them with their fingers—all brutal and intolerable practices, totally unworthy of any one pretending to civilization.
To those who have well learned the art of reading, what inexhaustible delights does the world of books contain! With Milton, "to behold the bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies;" to journey through far countries with Marco Polo; to steer across an unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of the frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane; to study the manners of ancient nations with Herodotus; to live over again the life of Greece and Rome with Plutarch's heroes; to trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and Mommsen; to pursue the story of the modern world in the pages of Hume, Macaulay, Thiers and Sismondi, and our own Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft; to enjoy afresh the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the polished and splendid diction of Cicero; to drink in the wisdom of philosophers, and to walk with Socrates, Plato and the stoics through the groves of Academia; to be kindled by the saintly utterances of prophets and apostles, St. Paul's high reasoning of immortality, or the seraphic visions of St. John; to study the laws that govern communities with the great publicists, or the economy of nations with Adam Smith and Stuart Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter Scott, the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life-pictures of George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo, and the masterly delineations of Thackeray; to hang over the absorbing biographies of Dr. Franklin, Walter Scott and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel the inspiration of the great poets of all ages, from Homer down to Tennyson; to read Shakespeare—a book that is in itself almost a university:—is not all this satisfaction enough for human appetite, however craving, solace enough for trouble, however bitter, occupation enough for life, however long?
There are pleasures that perish in the using; but the pleasure which the art of reading carries with it is perennial. He who can feast on the intellectual spoils of centuries need fear neither poverty nor hunger. In the society of those immortals who still rule our spirits from their urns, we become assured that though heaven and earth may pass away, no true thought shall ever pass away.
The great orator, on whose lips once hung multitudes, dies and is forgotten; the great actor passes swiftly off the stage, and is seen no more; the great singer, whose voice charmed listening crowds by its melody, is hushed in the grave; the great preacher survives but a single generation in the memory of men; all we who now live and act must be, in a little while, with yesterday's seven thousand years:—but the book of the great writer lives on and on, inspiring age after age of readers, and has in it more of the seeds of immortality than anything upon earth.
