and frequently a substitute for schools. They are the vehicles by which knowledge is brought down and scattered. The intelligence of a community is assured in which a love of reading has been formed.

The diffusion of intelligence through the community, by the agency of public and private libraries, is transforming the face of society. Influences, mightier than armies, are going forth from these quiet retreats, and silently working revolutions more grand and decisive than have been produced by all the potent forces of antiquity. Like so many converging lenses, they gather the scattered light of all ages, and pour it along the path of civilization. Before the increasing brightness, false theories and old superstitions are dissipated; clumsy methods of labor and of art are yielding to the cunning devices of all-transforming intellect; the chains of slavery are melting; old abuses in schools and government are passing away; despotic institutions are crumbling, and the frame-work of society is being reconstructed on a nobler and more Christian plan.

The influence of books is greatest, and most farreaching, upon the active and plastic minds of children. Bad works drop a poison into their hearts, which insinuates itself into the very center of their moral being, and thence works outward through the character, till all is diseased and corrupted. The lives of pirates and banditti, drawn in a fascinating style; works of fiction into which the cunning hand of genius has woven bad morals and pernicious prin

ciples; the songs of licentious poets, and the literature of a corrupt court or age, if suffered to fall into the hands of youth, debase the warm imagination before the reason begins to exercise its discriminating power. Such works corrupt the fountains of life and give an irresistible proclivity to vicious courses. But good books, through which great thinkers, and large-hearted Christian men speak their words of warning or of cheer to posterity, are an invaluable treasure to the young. Through these silent corridors of thought, the master spirits of other days and all tongues come back and sit down with the humble cottager at his fireside, or with the prince in his palace, and discoursé familiarly upon all high themes. Here Shakspeare lifts the curtain from before the great play of life, and Milton sings his severer song of Paradise Lost and Regained. There the Herschels, father and son, direct the eye to the stars and nebula that stand on the outermost verge of creation, and Newton traces the footsteps of nature through all her secret paths. Now the soul is entranced by the creations of the Wizard of the North, and now fascinated by the unsurpassed narrative of Irving. The teachings of history are unfolded to us by Niebuhr and by Macaulay, by Prescott and Bancroft. The eloquence of Burke pours its princely affluence into our minds and fills our hearts with unutterable emotions. The grand and massive oratory of Webster, irresistible as when first it fell upon a subdued and awe-struck Senate, "thrills in every vein" and lifts us above the aspi

rations of ordinary life. We take in hand a volume of Augustine, or Baxter, or some other of the godly men whose influence was a saving power to other ages, and, by imperceptible gradations are transformed into the same image. These and such as these, are the teachers of the young who have access to libraries. From such companionship an influence, silent but irresistible, goes forth to enlarge the capacities and multiply the resources, moral and physical, of our whole population. The boy or girl who has acquired a love for reading, and who has the means for gratifying such a taste, rarely engages in vicious pursuits, or becomes the victim of debasing appetites. The mind is preoccupied by elevated themes of thought, to be pondered while the hands are busy, or in the vacant hours which might otherwise be given to folly, if not to vice. The memory is stored with knowledge which gives weight and interest to conversation, gravity and stability to character, and elevates the tone of social intercourse.

A wise Providence, in developing the divine plan of progress, bestows upon some children special gifts. These endowments are given without regard to social distinctions. God allows no monopoly of his bounties. The responsible recipient may be born in affluence and power, or in the comfortless and unprivileged hovel of poverty. It is the duty of a free government to yield obedience to the divine law of human improvement, by establishing schools and libraries for its whole population, that so the

preordained teachers and leaders may take the places to which they have been divinely appointed. If this was the universal practice, men would find their natural places; shams and quacks would soon lose their occupation.

There is a natural affinity of kindred spirits. Minds of similar genius instinctively tend to each other. Place a gifted youth in the midst of many good books, and he will obey the attractions of mind as naturally as the flower turns to the sun. He will receive the heat and light that perpetually emanate from the utterances of true men. The germs of thought will be awakened, which, later in life, may ripen into inventions, poems, philosophies, or systems of commerce and government. Aspirations will be enkindled which penury, adversity, opposition and envious malice will fan into a celestial flame. The trophies of Miltiades will not suffer the youthful Themistocles to sleep. The ambition of the conqueror of the world was nursed by the Iliad, and the first Napoleon made Plutarch's Lives his daily companion. So must it ever be. Thought, truth and goodness, can never lose their power to influence and mould the characters of men.

There are districts in most of the States in which schools are kept only three or four months during the entire year, leaving eight or nine months in which the children of those districts are without any instruction. Of all the children who attend our public schools, probably one-half do not enjoy school privileges more than a third of the year.

Such children stand in special need of libraries to which they may resort, and where they may find the means and motives to intellectual improvement. Place before them the works of the best authors, and they may be stimulated to the acquisition of knowledge which will prove a full compensation for the loss of schooling. During the sessions of the schools, also, students should have access to collections of books for collateral reading. They are necessary to illustrate the studies of the student, and to deepen and enlarge his view of science and literature. The attainments sometimes made under such adverse circumstances are amazing and very suggestive. Rittenhouse, without teacher, and "with but two or three books," acquired so much knowledge of the mathematics as to be able to read the Principia of Newton. He was distinguished among astronomers for his learning. Stone, afterwards celebrated as a mathematician, while yet a gardener, was discovered by the Duke of Argyle, reading the Principia in Latin. The astonished Duke asked him how he had made such acquisitions. "A servant taught me to read,” replied the boy, and asked, "Does one need to know anything more to learn everything else?" Our own country furnishes a long and illustrious catalogue of self-made men, whose genius was awakened and sustained by books, without the discipline of schools. Franklin and Bowditch, Clay and Irving, and a host of others, whose works and fame are of the treasures of the Republic, stand forth as the silent but powerful ad