The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-06-01

"The pleasant books. that silently among
Our household treasures taxi familiar places
And are to us, as If a living tongue
Spake from the printed leaves or pictured
faces!"
LEARNING is not now, as is Chau-
GERS time, restricted to the cloister-
the companion of the privileged few;
she has left her monastic seclusion,
and gone abroad among the COM
munity at large, making her abode
alike with prince and peasant. With
a most lavish hand she scatters her
blessings upon all classes and condi-
tions of people, wherever she is ac-
corded welcome. There is now no
excuse for ignorance, even the brawny
hand of the tiller of the soil may if he
will take Thomson's Seasons" in his
left hand and his sickle in his right,
and SO cultivate his mind as we'll as
his field. The greatest achievement,
indeed, of our vaunted civilization
could scarcely crave better illustra-
tion of its triumph. A story is told
of Roman patrician, who expended
vast sums of money in purchasing a
household of learned slaves, after the
order of Esop. One had learnel to
recite to him Homers Had, another
the odes of Pindar, another those of
Horace, and another represented some
others of the renowned authors of
classic antiquity. The legend. if it
be no more, has in effect become in
our day grand realization, since we
have the accumulative wealth of an
cient as we'll as modern literature,
made accessible to us at a moiety of
the cost of those early times. What
were then the coveted luxuries of the
few have now become almost the COM
mon property of the whole commun-
ity.
Who of US can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
Epictetus wisely said, "You will do
the greatest service to the State, if
you shall raise, not the roofs of the
houses, but the souls of the citizens:
for it is better that great souls should
dwell in small houses, rather than
mean slaves to lurk in great houses"
Crafty men are apt to contemn
studies, simple men admire them, and
wise men use them. Lord Bacon has
told us that mo pleasure is compare
BILE to the standing upon the vantage
ground of truth" and the Bard of
Avon's we'll known words are:
"Divine philosophy
Not harsh and grabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lutte,
And perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns."
Another glorious thing about books
is their immortality; Homer and Vir-
gil, 80 far off in the annals of time,
still sing to us of military prowess;
Plato teaches us to think, as of old in
the academic grove; while later mas
ters of the Tyre, Dante, Milton and
Shakespeare, with their illustrious
successors, are among our household
oracles.
Charming bears this emphatic trib-
ute to the value of books: "The diffu-
sion of these silent teachers, books,
through the whole community, is to
work greater effects than artillery,
machinery and legislation. The cul-
ture which it is to spread, whilst an
unspeakable good to the individual.
is also to become the stability of the
nation" And Cicero said; Learning
makes the young temperate, is the
comfort of age; standing for wealth
with poverty, and serving as an orna-
ment to riches"
If free public institutions of learn
ing are to be regarded as the crown
ing glory of state, private libraries
may claim to be among the choicest
of individual endowments; since the
home is the seminary of all other in
stitutions. But public libraries, and
especially private collections of books
are of recent growth-they are the
product of our modern advanced civil
lization. At the close of the thir-
teenth century, even the University
of Oxford could boast only of few
tracts and classics, kept in chests. To
borrow, even, book then, was very
difficult affair, involving heavy re-
sponsibility; and the knowledge of
the uses of books was also limited in
deed. Even Charlemagne, it is
stated, ordered his books to be sold,
after his death, and the money to be
given to the poor. Yet all through
medieval times there were scholars,
who loved their books, and made
much of them, as the numerous rich
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