Elizabeth daily monitor. [volume] (Elizabeth, N.J.) 1868-1880, 1868-09-25
BOOKS.

Scarcely day passes but Whit ut
tention is called TO the publication Of
new books, and their claims on the
residing public are very fully spread
out, both by publisher and reviewer.
OF late several excellent works have
issued from the Riverside Press lin
deed, one can hardly go amiss of q
good book, areadable and really inter
esting book bearing the olive imprint.
We wish to be of service to our readers
in the selection OF our autumnal and
winter evening readings, and propose
soon TO call special attention in brief
reviews Of such books as may be intro
duced into every family with the posi-
tive assurance that the home life-the
style, taste, and improvement of the
members of the household will receive
no detriment, but be greatly quickened
and as surely strengthened for good.
Good books on the table, well chosen,
of history, and art, and poetry, and
also of romance, like choice pictures
on the walls of our dwellings,, or well
arranged shrubbery about our lawns
and gardens, cannot but aid materially
in making home attractive, and so
weakening the power of outside inf1u-
ences to lead astray the youth or, at
least to lead them away from the quiet
of the domestic hearth. The power Of
books none can tell they whisper Of
life and its labor, Of humanity and its
true issues they turn thought into the
channels of purity and hope, or, OF err
ror and despair. The reading of sin
gle volume may bless or blast charac-
ter, family, or even a community.
We plead for care in the choice ofbooks
for the young. To the reading OF bad
books may be traced the ruin of thou
sands. Let the guardians OF the young,
Gull out the trash and bring it to the
fire. Let them spend more for the
home, or family library. and then en-.
list the household in the reading of
what is at once profitable and enter
tanning, and the next decade will show
the result in our sons well instructed,
aside from the mere mental accumula-
tions of the school room, and fitted for
positions of trust and honor, without
fear of shame in both the State and the
nation. Our daughters too will not
only be able to talk but have some
thing to talk about.
Many fail to buy the latest new
work, however excellent it may be,
saying, ''we have more in the house
than are read )" this is just the reason
why something should be introduced,
why 'snew conner" should be allowed
to aid in making up the latent taste for
reading, if not indeed, to inspire such
a taste. Buy books, read them. Take
up an old book, and is it not like an
old friend ? Its very pages recall the
past and in them we live over years
long since flown, and memory quick
ened calls up the form and faces of
those perhaps who read with us. Buy
the well endorsed aeao book, to keep
face with the march of the age, and, as
sure as thought thus finds utterance,
so surely will we find that a reading
in its well established intel
ligence is a safeguard against all the
encroachments of vice.
1t was the saying of Coleridge, who
well knew the value of books, they
are faithful repositories, which may be
awhile neglected or forgotten but
when they are opened again, will again
impart their instruction memory once
interrupted is not to be recalled. Writ
ten learning is fixed luminary, which,
after the cloud had hidden it passed
away, is again bright in its proper sta
ton. Tradition is but meteor, which,
if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. F."