be implicitly believed or followed. If it is often wise to regard our books with a kind of suspicion and to guard against their excessive influence, much more should we do the same with respect to our newspapers, even if they are the best.

We have questioned whether the saying were altogether true that, "No man is the wiser for his books until he is above them." We cannot question that it is true of newspapers.

Fourth. Every one should remember that he is to some degree responsible for the character of the issues from the newspaper press. The newspapers of a country it should never be forgotten are no worse or better than the people would have them to be. They are a reflex of the knowledge and tastes of the majority of their readers. We cannot resist this inference however humiliating at times it may be. More than one intelligent defender of our country in Europe has been arrested and disturbed in his argument by the question, "How do you explain the fact that such and such a newspaper has so extensive a circulation among your people?" It would be well if every man who buys or reads a newspaper would think of this question and of the lessons of duty and honor which it suggests.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LIBRARY.

READERS of books desire to become the owners of books. The pleasure and advantage which are derived from the use of a volume, prompt to the wish that it may be constantly within reach. Hence, books like everything else which is desirable come to be sought for and valued as property. The child is not satisfied with using a picture-book, he must call the book his own. The persistent littérateur and the veteran scholar value no purchase or gift so highly as a rare or elegant volume. The enthusiastic and devoted reader, if he has the means and the spirit of independence, usually becomes the buyer and owner of books. Every reader gathers about himself something of a library. Every community so soon as it rises above the most pressing and immediate wants, feels the need of a collection of books which may supply its higher necessities. We cannot therefore properly dismiss our theme of Books and Reading without also considering The Library.

We begin with the personal or private Library. The thought which first suggests itself is the very obvious one, that the size of a library when collected by a single person for his private use depends on his means, his liberality, his feeling of independence, his duties and relations to others, and the comparative estimate which he places upon books; not upon any one of these, but upon all united. A man comparatively poor, may contrive to acquire a larger collection of books than a man who is rich, simply because he cares more for them, and in order that he may possess them is

willing to forego many other possessions and enjoyments. On the other hand a man of ample means and of decided literary tastes may deny himself the convenience and luxury of a library for such reasons of duty as would lead him to forego other conveniences or luxuries.

It is the quality not the size of the private library in which we are most nearly interested. Some persons buy books chiefly for use, and the library which they collect is conspicuously professional. The physician must at least have his treatises on physiology, surgery and the materia medica; the lawyer cannot dispense with a copy of the Statutes or with a book of legal forms; the clergyman, provided he can read, must own a Bible, a commentary and a concordance. These indispensables naturally expand into those formidable libraries which are strictly professional; libraries which are "caviare to the general;" but which to the individual worker with the brain, are literally his "tools of trade." However unintelligible and uninteresting such a library is to a layman, it is full of interest and importance to the artist, the mechanic, or any other professional worker.

Often persons collect books for enjoyment. It is to them a luxury and delight to read history and biography, fiction and poetry, eloquence and criticism. To have a large collection of books of all these descriptions constantly within their reach, is to have at hand treasures and luxuries with which nothing else deserves to be compared. They say with another, "I no sooner come into the library but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet-content that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness."

Still other persons buy books for show. They like the sight of elegant books in substantial and costly bindings.

The show itself is pretty to the eye and the associations are grateful to the mind, that knows enough of the use and value of books to be flattered by the company with which the possession of books connects the owner. It is gratifying to gaze upon the stately folios as they support the elegant yet substantial octavos, and these the compact and genteel duodecimos, and these the daintier sizes-to behold some in polished calf, skilfully tooled in figures of arabesque; others in levantine turkey, rich with its deeply grained colors; others in the gayer hues of the French chagrin, bright with red and green and blue; and others still in the many varieties of German finish; and others distinguished by the Roman vellum, delicately set off with its tracery of gilt. It is a proud act for the owner of such an expensive collection to introduce a friend or a guest to his treasures with their appropriate accessories of illustrated works, choice engravings, illuminated missals, etc., and to count up the cost of his expenditures in honor of letters and art.

Learned

Others still, buy for curiosity and for rareness. and sharp-cut Elzevirs, elegant Aldines, much sought Incunabula, Editiones principes, books with autographs or annotations of former owners famous in literature, books made up by mosaic handicraft of illustrations collected far and near, tall paper copies, survivors of scanty or exhausted editions, all these are bought with princely liberality and are exhibited with natural pride to the select few who can judge and estimate them as only diamond fanciers estimate diamonds.

Others buy a Library for the convenience of their families or friends; being themselves too busy to have much to do with books or having no decided taste for books, but desiring to cultivate their tastes or enlarge their knowledge and usefulness.

The personal Library is often in a sense the embodiment of the spirit of its collector and owner. It certainly is a

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striking manifestation of his tastes, habits, character and pursuits. This is always true if the Library is collected with any special zeal, and the owner is free to indulge his special proclivities. We can usually interpret the tastes and principles of a man, often we can discover his crotchets and prejudices by simply inspecting his library. The mass of his collection may be such books as no gentleman's library should be without; " but the discerning eye will spy out here and there a volume or a seriesperhaps in some private corner-which reveal his peculiar tastes and his inmost feelings. Very often the indications are so obvious as to need no special sagacity for their interpretation. Even if the library is not prevailingly professional, it will reveal to the hasty observer of its shelves, whether its owner is mathematician, physicist or linguist, and in what speciality of each; and this whether he is a proficient or amateur. If he is devoted to history, his library will show it, and will also make known the kind of history in which he delights. The lover of poetry, or fiction or literary criticism, and the man of many-sided and universal tastes will be as distinctly revealed. The dominant tastes, the ruling aims, the controlling principles can often be gathered from the presence or absence of certain classes of books. With equal distinctness the fact is proclaimed whether he is a believer in God or in Nature, in Christ or in Humanity. If he is a Christian believer, his theological creed and his religious earnestness may be conjectured with similar confidence.

By the same rule the growth of a library when it is unconstrained by hindrances or influences from without, is a record and memorial of the growth and changes of the owner's intellect and tastes, and perhaps of sudden or gradual transformations in his aims and principles. If he has retained his early school books and with them the tales and lives which delighted his childhood, these well thumbed