in the next lecture to trace some of the applications of these principles in the formation of our habits of reading.

The discouraging effect which is produced by the present and perpetually increasing multitude of books is, in some degree, lessened by the thought that all are not literature. A vast deal of paper is printed and folded and shaped into the outward fashion of a book, that never enters into the literature of the language. What (it may be asked) is Literature? This is a question not enough thought of; the answer to it is important, but by no means, I think, difficult, when once we see the necessity of making the discrimination. Books that are technical, that are professional, that are sectarian, are not literature in the proper sense of the term. The great characteristic of literature, its essential principle, is that it is addressed to man as man; it speaks to our common human nature; it deals with every element in our being that makes fellowship between man and man through all ages of man's history and through all the habitable regions of this planet. According to this view, literature excludes from its appropriate province whatever is addressed to men as they are parted into trades, and professions, and sects-parted, it may be, in the division for mutual good; or, it may be, by vicious and unchristian alienation. It is the relation to universal humanity which constitutes literature; it matters not how elevated, whether it be history, philosophy, or poetry, in its highest aspirations; or how humble, it may be the simplest rhyme or story that is level to the unquestioning faith and untutored intellect of childhood: let it but be addressed to our common human nature, it is literature in

the true sense of the term. No man can put it aside and say, “It concerns not me:" no woman can put it aside and say, "It concerns not me: The books which do not enter into the literature of a language are limited in their uses, for they hold their intercourse with something narrower than human nature, while that which is literature has an audience-chamber capacious as the soul of man-enduring as his immortality. It has a voice whose rhythm is in harmony with the pulses of the human heart. It is this, and this alone-this universality-which places a book in a Nation's literature. It matters not what the subject, or what the mode of treating-be there but one touch of nature to make the whole world kin-it is enough to lift it into the region of literature. A London linen-draper writes a treatise on Angling, with no other thought, perhaps, than to teach an angler's subtle craft, but infusing into his art so much of Christian meekness, so deep a feeling for the beauties of earth and sky, such rational loyalty to womanhood, and such simple, child-like love of song, the songs of bird, of milk-maid, and of minstrel, that this little book on fishing has earned its life of two hundred years already, outliving many a more ambitious book, and Izaak Walton has a place of honour amid British authors, and has the love even of those who have learned the poet-moralist's truer wisdom,

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride.

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."*

I speak of this instance to show how a subject which is indifferent to many, and even repulsive to not a few, may be redeemed and animated by the author's true human

*Wordsworth's Poems, Hart Leap Well. Collective edition, p. 152.

heartedness. How much deeper then must be the interest of all the subjects, in the vast variety, with which there is universal sympathy! How much mightier must be the agency of literature as it passes beyond and above that which is local and limited, temporary or conventional, into the region of the spiritual and the eternal, when it enters into the very soul of man, admonishing it of its weakness, and of its strength, and of its immortality!

Now, whether we look at the simpler and humbler aims of literature-healthful, innocent recreation-the recuperative influences which blend so happily with the severer functions of life, or whether we contemplate its elevating and chastening power on the minds of men, we cannot mistake that its just and great attribute is its universality. It speaks to every ear that is not deaf to it. It asks admission into every heart. The books that are not literature have the professional, the technical, but not the human stamp: some, the law-books for instance, put on an outward garb of their own, as if to warn all but one class of readers away from them. But observe the books which are Literature, how they speak to a people-to a whole nation-to scattered nations over the earth linked together by community of speech, above all such glorious community as our English speech; nay, more, so far as the Babel barriers which make the partitions of the earth are overleaped, a literature addresses itself to all mankind. This is true of even the light and more perishable literature, recreating and gladdening the hearts of men, if but for a season; and it is more lastingly true of the higher literature-for instance, our abundant and varied English essay-literature, philosophy, history with all its kindred themes, and poetry. Is it

not for every fellow-being speaking the English tongue, that Addison and Charles Lamb, the "Spectator" and Elia," have written? Is it not for every one who is willing to be lifted up to the high places of philosophy, that Bacon's words of wisdom were recorded? It is for all, that Clarendon's pictured page displays its great gallery of historic portraits: it is for all, that Arnold, in our own day, has shown how a mighty historian can throw a sacred light over profane history, by tracing God's providence in the annals of a pagan people. It is every man and every woman whom Spenser leads into the sunny and the shadowy spaces of his marvellous allegory; and Shakspeare into that more wondrous region, the soul of man, with its depths of goodness and of evil, brighter and darker than aught in the region of romance. In our own times, it was for all his race that Byron gave utterance to his passionate poetry: it was for all Christian readers that Southey, in his "Eastern Epics," interwove, with the heathen fable, bright threads of the glory of Christian faith; and it is for every one who takes thought of the deep things of his nature, the mysteries of his being, memories of early innocence and yearnings for eternity, that Wordsworth struck his lofty lyric, the most sublime ode in this and, perhaps, any language, on the birth—the life-the undying destiny of the soul of

man.

I have dwelt upon this prime quality of literature, its universality, because, simple as it is, it is practically lost sight of, in the propensity to identify all things in the shape of books with literature. Whatever is meant to minister to our universal human nature, either in the nature of the subject or the handling of it, takes its place, in

some range or other of literature: and nothing else is so entitled. And here let me step aside for a moment to notice an unworthy and very inadequate term, which, in its day has had some currency as a substitute for the term "literature." I refer to that vapid, half-naturalized term "belles-lettres," which was more in vogue formerly than now, getting currency, I suppose, during a period of shallow criticism not very remote from our day, when Doctor Blair and Lord Kames were great authorities. I have never met with anybody who could tell me what precise meaning it is meant to convey. The term had an appropriateness for much in the literature of France, but translate the words and transfer them to English literature, and how inane is such a title, so applied! Doctor Johnson has given it a place in the English vocabulary, and tells us it means "polite literature," which does not help the matter much. I should not have thought it worth while to stop to comment on this term, if I did not believe it to be not only vague and inadequate, but also mischievous; and it is well known what power of mischief there may be in a word. "Belles-lettres"-fine letters-polite literature—what thought do these terms convey but of luxuries of the mind, a refined amusement, but no more than amusement, confectionaries (as it were) of the mind, rather than needful, solid, healthy, life-sustaining food. If the term "belles-lettres" excludes the weighty and sublime productions of the mind, then is it a miserable. substitute for what should be comprehended in such a term as "literature:" if it includes them, then is it a pitifully inapposite title. Now the mischief is just here: this dainty, feeble term leads people to suppose that literature is an easy, indolent cultivation, a sort of passive, patrician