The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-03-19 00:00:00

THE PLEASURES OF READING.

Sir John Lubbock opened the Wimbledon Free
Library the other night. This library, said Sir John,
will be a rich granary for you all. It will be, more-
over, no mere passing or temporary interest. What
Keats says of beauty may be applied to books. A
good book is "a joy for ever." Few of us realise the
wonderful privilege of life; the glories of the universe
which is our own, if we choose to make it so; or the
extent to which we can make ourselves what we wish
to be; the blessings we inherit, or the power we
possess of securing peace and triumphing over pain
and sorrow. Knowledge is power, and much more
than power. "What pleasure," said Bacon, "is com-
parable to that of standing on the vantage ground of
truth." We are told that Omens, the philosopher,
once asked Pyrrhus what he would do when he
had conquered Italy. "I will conquer Sicily."
"And after Sicily ?" "Then Africa." "And settr
you have conquered the world r "I will take my ease
and be merry." "Then," asked Cineas, "why can
you not take your ease and be merry now ?" More-
over, as Sir Arthur Helps has wisely pointed out,
"the enlarged view that we have of the universe must
in measure damp personal ambition. What is it to
be a king, sheikh, tetrarch, or emperor over a bit of a
bit of this little earth ?" The inhabitants of Wimble-
don are setting a good example when they refuse to
confine their local expenditure to lighting and paving
the street., to the sanitation of houses, to merely
material purposes; but propose to provide food for
the mind as well as the body, a school for the old as
well as for the young; for, in the words of Enietetus,
you will do tbe" greatest service to the State if you
shall raise, rot the rerfs of the houses, tut he souls
of the citizens; for it is better that great FOU s should
dwell in small houses rather than for mean slaves to
burrow in great palaces." With this library open to
you, yoe have a safe retreat from the cares and
anxieties of the world. With this library open to
you, no one in Wimbledon ought ever to be dull again.
As you sit here, indeed, time will fly all too quickly.
Here you may sit in your chair, and still be
in the quaint words of Sir T. Browne, "like Pompey
and his sons, in all quarters of the earth." You may
travel round the world with Captain Cook or Darwin,
Kingsley or Ruskin, who will show you more than
you would ever have seen by yourselves. The world
itself has no limits for you. Trumboldt and Herschel
will carry you away into space, even to the mysterious
nebulm, far beyond the sun, or even the stars. Times
has no more bounds than spree. History stretches
out behind you, and geology will carry you far away
beyond the utmost limits or history. Nay, even the
material universe itself occupies, as it were, but one
plane of thought. Aristotle and Plato will transport
you into a different sphere of existence, none the less
delightful because to appreciate them requires some
training. You may make this library for yourselves
then if you use it wisely, a true Paradise on earth—
s very Garden of Eden, without its one drawback, for
all is now thrown freely open to you, including espe-
cially the fruit of the tree of knowledge, for which
we are told that our first mother sacrificed all the
rest.