time and opportunity! How narrow the bounds which confine our reading abilities! Though a list of the great writers contain all the constituents of an Epicurean feast, yet to most of us it resembles the menu of a Gargantuan banquet.

As to the classics of the old world, surely, it may be urged, in such an essentially practical age we can afford to neglect books so hopelessly out of date? Yet there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that the wisdom of the old world can ever be out of date, for it is the wisdom that has created the civilisation of the newer world. Countless generations of men may pass away and be utterly forgotten, but the principles of morality inherent in man's nature will endure for ever. And it is these great principles of all that is good and noble in our nature that is brought out and developed insensibly by the study of the classics in our youth. Moreover they are books that have been accepted by all the nations of Europe as containing the bases of human thought. Something at least we should all know of these great writers common to all civilised nations.

To most of us, however, there is an insurmountable barrier surrounding them, the matter of language. The knowledge of Greek and Latin that we acquired at school has become painfully rusty. Is it worth while slogging away laboriously with grammar and dictionary at the expense of valuable time which might otherwise be devoted

to the more modern classics in our own tongue? Candidly, it is not. If we have retained sufficient of our Greek and Latin to read it at sight with but an occasional reference to the dictionary well and good; but otherwise it is a painful waste of time. Hamerton recommends that we read the ancients with the help of literal translations beside the original, in which way, he says, we 'may attain a closer acquaintance with ancient literature than would be possible by translation alone.' But to many an English version must be the only door by which they may enter Attica and Rome.

After all, it is for each one of us to decide how widely our time and opportunities shall permit us to wander on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. 'The best time-savers are the love of soundness in all we learn to do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations.' Yet it is better to have wandered on the lowermost slopes of the mountain than never to have entered ancient Greece at all.

Who nowadays, outside the universities, reads these ancient classics? Where will you find a business man of thirty years of age whose delight in his leisure time is the reading of Horace or Homer? Here and there, perhaps, you may come across a man of classical education who still retains the love of ancient Greece and Rome, instilled into him in his youth, sufficiently to

1 P. G. Hamerton.

influence the course of his reading; but he is a rarity indeed. Among the many thousands of young men employed in business in the great cities, most of whom have learnt something at least of the classics in their youth, scarcely will you find one who will confess to having time for such literature. Yet all these thousands read many books each year, and can always find time to devour the latest popular novel.

It is chiefly a question of recreation versus education. Tired and jaded with the day's business, the young man of to-day has little inclination to devote his leisure time to study. Light frothy literature removes his thoughts from worldly cares, and by a complete change of subject stimulates a mind that has been enervated by concentration for hours on one particular theme. No effort is required, and, more important still, it does not make one think.

For daily reading in the train or over meals, with this purpose always in view, so far so good. But what of the many hours of leisure in every man's life, when no mental recreation is needed? What does the average man read, then? It must be confessed that in nine cases out of ten his literature remains precisely the same. Doubtless the reason is simply because, having always been accustomed to reading the same kind of books, he knows no other sort. Mention Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and he stares at you aghast.

'Good gracious,' he exclaims, 'I'm not going to read stuff like that; I should get the hump for a week; give me something cheerful.' And he picks up 'The Bauble,' by Mrs. Risquet Trashe.

And he is quite right. To anyone whose literature has consisted for years of nothing but novels of the circulating library type, a sudden application to the great writers would indeed be depressing. Is it necessary, however, or indeed wise, that any man's mental pabulum should consist entirely of novels? Nothing is further from our mind than to decry the taste for novelreading; for, wisely employed, novels can become one of the joys of life. We can but agree with Miss Austen when she inveighs, in Northanger Abbey,' against those who belittle the productions of the novelist. But would she have been so emphatic had she lived to witness the printingpresses spouting forth that frothy flood which effervesces round the more serious writings of today? Would that every novel we take up had the delightful 'genius, wit, and taste' of Jane Austen to recommend it. How few and far between are the really good novels that we read!

There can be no finer recreation for a tired mind than a good novel. There is, however, one habit of reading which has become almost a social evil; and that is the habit of reading newspapers which many indulge in, morning, noon, and night.

It is difficult to imagine anything more calculated to destroy consecutive and considered thought than the enormous variety of inconsequential topics that assails one every time one opens a newspaper. The mind becomes completely fuddled with the heterogeneous patchwork of entirely useless information. The only method we have discovered by which one can acquire the important news and yet retain the serenity of one's mind is that of having such news only as she knows will be of use read out by one's wife at breakfast. And this does not mean that the mental discomforts of the newspaper are relegated to one's better-half, for women are usually interested in the smaller details of everyday life.

No wonder that a large number of city men' live out their lives without ever opening a book that is worth reading meditatively; for newspaperreading in course of time must completely undermine one's mental stability. After a few years, a book that is not composed of headlines, short chapters, small paragraphs and ejaculatory sentences, is unreadable without mental effort. So that long before he is middle-aged the city man has acquired the habit of 'gìancing at' a newssheet or magazine whenever he has nothing to do for a few minutes: a kind of reading that is about as advantageous to the mind as that which we indulge in when fingering the antique periodicals in the dentist's waiting-room. In later In later years he