hundreds of volumes in search for something new, which is feebly conceived, as lazily dismissed, and as stupidly forgotten. Better read one history, one poem, or one novel, well, if it takes a year to despatch it at stolen intervals of time, than lazily to consume twelve hours of the day in a process which wastes the time, and, what is worse, wastes the intellect, the fancy, and the living soul.

But how is the attention to be controlled? How can this miserable passiveness be prevented or overcome? Rules in great number have been prescribed. All sorts of directions have been devised. An ingenious author has advised that each sentence should be read through at a single breath; the breath being retained until the sentence is finished. Some advise to read with the pen in hand; others to make a formal analysis of every volume; others to repeat to ourselves, or to recite to others, the substance of each page and chapter. These, and other devices, are all of service in their way, and some of them we will consider in their appropriate place. But their chief value turns upon this, that they induce an interest or require an interest, either direct or indirect, in the subject-matter which is read. Whatever awakens the interest will be certain to fix and hold the attention. The hired lad in the country who steals an hour from sleep or rest, that he may get on a few pages in the odd volume of Plutarch or Rollin, which, having fallen in his way, has begun to unfold before his astonished gaze the till then unknown history of the ancient world; the errand-boy of the city, who stands trembling at the book-stall, lest the surly proprietor should cut short his borrowed pleasure from the page which he devours; these need no artificial devices to teach them to hold the mind to the book, or to retain its contents. The great secret of their attention is to be found in the fresh interest with which they lay hold of the thoughts of the pictured page, and this remains ever

the great secret of the habit of successful reading even to the mind that has been disciplined to the most amazing feats of application. There are no arts of attention, no arts of memory, which can be compared with this natural and certain condition of success.

Daniel Webster was one of the most earnest and intelligent of readers all his life long. His favorite authors were read and re-read with a passionate fondness. His critical conversations upon the standard poets and essayists and orators of the English tongue are still remembered and quoted by those who were present to hear when the mood and opportunity of discourse were upon him. In one of the last evenings of his life he beguiled the weariness of his attendants by reciting a poem from Cowper. How he came to be so successful and so intelligent a reader is explained in his autobiography. Whatever he read he read so often and so earnestly that he learned to repeat it. "We had so few books," he says, "that to read them once or twice was nothing; we thought they were all to be got by heart." A small circulating library had been established in the neighborhood by his father and other persons, and among the books which he obtained from it was the Spectator. "I could not understand why it was necessary that the author of the Spectator should take such great pains to prove that Chevy Chase was a good story; that was the last thing I doubted." He tells us, "In those boyish days there were two things which I did dearly love, viz: reading and playing-passions which did not cease to struggle when boyhood was over."

The man or boy who reads with attention thus quickened cannot read amiss if what he reads is worth perusing. Of his habits when a student he says: "Many other students read more than I did and knew more than I did. But so much as I read I made my own. When a half hour or an hour at most had elapsed, I stored my book, and thought on

what I had read. If there was anything peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I endeavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and commonly could effect my object."

Sir Edward Sugden explained to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton the secret of his professional success in the following words: "I resolved when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week, but at the end of the twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection." Mem. of Sir T. F. Buxton, ch. xxiv.

He who would read with attention must learn to be interested in what he reads. He must feel wants or learn to create wants which must be supplied. If it be history that he would read with attention, he must feel deficiencies that will not let him rest till they are supplied; he must be moved by a desire that will command its object. Is it poetry or fiction? He must be excited by a restless appetite that longs to be amused with new pictures, or diverted by humorous scenes, or stirred by lofty ideals, or charmed by poetic melody, and that grows by what it feeds on. And the man must master, and not be mastered by, his increasing stock of knowledge and his treasured products of the imagination. He must exercise great and still greater energy in judging and applying the acquisitions he has made, making them accompany his musings, feed his memory, animate his principles, and guide his life.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW TO READ WITH INTEREST AND EFFECT.

We have seen that a book is the creation of a living man, and should be regarded and judged somewhat as a man himself is tried and estimated. A few books are indeed almost impersonal, and might have been written by one man as readily as by another. These are to be judged chiefly by their value, i. e., by what they contain. But most books express more or less of the personality of their authors; and in reading them, we come in contact with living men. Good books, besides the value of what they contain and impart, have a positive worth in their effect on the principles, feelings and character.

If this is true, then in reading we are properly said to come into communication with a human being, who will either instruct and elevate, or mislead and degrade us. From these fundamental conceptions of Books and Reading, we have begun to derive our rules for the selection of the books which we read, and for our own behaviour in using them. We have also seen that, for success in reading, we must read with attention, and to read with attention, we must read with an awakened and sustained interest. Though this interest when awakened must be regulated by the rules of prudence and duty, yet it often needs to be enkindled and sustained, if we are to read with attention and profit. It becomes then a question of prime concern how we can so arouse, sustain and direct our interest in the books which we read as to make our reading most effective for good. In answer to this somewhat comprehensive inquiry, we reply:

1. If we are at a loss what to read, or if we can think of nothing which we desire especially to read, it is well to ask ourselves what we care most to learn or to think of. No questions are more frequently pressed than these: "What shall I read? What shall I read next? With what books shall I begin a course of reading? What do you think will interest me?" Sometimes a person asks these questions of himself. More frequently he addresses them to another. The best answers which can be given to them are suggested by other questions like these: "What are you most interested to know? In what particulars does your ignorance most disturb or annoy you? With what class of facts and thoughts, principles or emotions would it please you best to be conversant?" If a person can answer these questions with any satisfaction to himself, he is in the way of knowing what books he ought first to read. For if he cannot without assistance find the book which he ought first to lay hold of, he can be more easily directed by another, when his adviser knows what he cares most to know or what excites his keenest appetite.

The great difficulty with the majority of readers is, that their sense is indefinite of any wants which books can supply, or their desire to supply these wants is feeble. Or, if they are aware of their deficiencies in the general, they have neither the courage nor the patience to know them in the detail, and manfully to set about the work of removing them. To many persons the wants which books alone can supply are themselves either created or brought to light by the use of books. Many a man needs first to read and to read with interest, in order to have awakened in his soul a thirst for books and a taste for reading. There are however not a few who through a sense of ignorance, or shame when brought in contact with those better read than themselves, or through some other lucky though perhaps rude shock to their self-conceit and self