XV.-ON BOOKS.

To look around a bookseller's shop, or a gentleman's library, or even to read a modern catalogue of books, brings before the mind such a realizing conviction of their multitudinous number, as to strike every one with surprise, and some people, who love them not, with alarm.

From the tract to the voluminous folio, they are powerful moral engines, working good and evil upon society.

Every educated person has proved for himself how usefully and how detrimentally they can act. He can point to books as he would to persons, and say, This has been my friend, and that has been my foe! The influence exercised by books, is secondary only to that of habitual society, and in many instances when they are opposed, in meditative minds, these silent champions of opinion triumph over their animated adversaries.

Among books as among persons, those are commonly most acceptable to us, whose sentiments harmonize the best with our previous habits of

thought and feeling. In books too, as in society, the sympathy which has won attention and goodwill, engages us to listen more willingly to

instruction.

This book is more pleasant and profitable to one man, and that book to another, though the truths they convey are equally important, and urged with equal eloquence, for one comes to each heart like the voice of a friend, and the other like that of a stranger. No book but the Bible suits us all.

The heart which has long yearned in vain to meet its fellow in a being who might be capable of understanding, appreciating and sympathizing with its peculiarities of thought and feeling, may often discover in the picture of a dead author's mind, what he had vainly sought in the living world; and find too, that the same sense of loneliness had ever accompanied the spirit with which he thus seems to hold communion.

Who can forget the emotion excited by the first reading of a favourite book? It resembles an introductory interview with a friend, whom in the first hour's intercourse one feels the heart must love for ever.

Among the gifts of God's goodness, we have to be thankful for books. And the order, and manner, and time in which they fall in our way, often afford remarkable proofs of his particular providence.

From the first book spelled by the infant at his mother's knee, through all the volumes of instruction or amusement read in childhood and youth, and all the multifarious works since read, every one, from the pages of which the eyes ever conveyed an idea, wrought some good or ill effect upon the mind. There is comprised in books a summary of the world's knowledge. The result of the accumulated observation and study of all nations in all generations.

Let us consider the vast and various treasures of knowledge which are placed within our reach, and the great advantage of acquiring as much of them as we can. While continually enlarging the mental capacity, they continually supply it, affording to the imagination the most exquisite gratification, to the understanding the most healthful exercise, and to reason the most noble contemplations.

The human mind resembles a tract of land either lying fallow, or in different stages of cultivation. In each, the native soil will permanently affect its productions. Knowledge is the manure of the field. Experience is the tiller of the soil. God has sown there good seed, and Satan has sown tares. The harvest day will come. From books the memory may be furnished with the history of all the known creatures of God, and of all the inventions of man; with the civil records of ancient and modern days, with the

chronicles of times, the lives of eminent persons, the narrations of remarkable occurrences, and the memorials of what has been written and spoken by the great and good; with the history of God's church, the predictions of prophecy, and the fulfilments of providence.1

From books the imagination may be enriched and delighted with the various treasures of sweet and noble poesy.

From books the understanding may derive the knowledge and satisfaction afforded by mathematical truth.

In books the reason may converse with all the sublimities of divine and human philosophy, consider the powers of invention displayed in arts and sciences, the present use of knowledge in logic and rhetoric, its modes of preservation in language and writing, and its application to all the civil and social relations of life.

Men, who had their lot been cast in Britain before the invention of the art of printing, must, unaided by education or society, have lived and died painfully conscious of latent talent, and subjected to a pressure of poverty, and darkness of ignorance which rendered its developement impossible, may now, in spite of such disadvantages, by the aid of books, become the ornaments and glory of their native land.

1 Vide Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

K

Lord Bacon aptly and beautifully calls books of intellectual improvement Georgics of the mind.'

None can read his works, none can take even a cursory view of their contents, without finding his own capacity enlarged by merely receiving an idea of the vast comprehensiveness of such an intellect. And we have not only books calculated for general use and benefit, but likewise books suited to every variety of taste, and adapted to all the variable moods of each individual mind. What one man can read unmoved, will incite another

'To frame he knows not what excelling things.'-AKENSIDE.

What is one hour's pleasant exercise, to the next may be irksome toil, even to the same individual.

After severe sickness, or mental dissipation, or agitation however caused, the thoughts gradually subsiding into tranquillity, often pass through the intermediate stage of imaginative occupation. Perhaps all minds are subject to such occasional debility. It is, alas, the strongest and best state of others, and the habitual condition of many capable of better things. Under it we cannot reason upon abstruse points, we cannot concentrate thought in sufficient force to comprehend any thing complex; we want some work of information or fancy on the continuous stream of which it may without effort float along..

Then it is that novel or romance reading offers