The Monticellonian., 1895-02-08


 the knowledge, the stor'd thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown to proportions so ut terly incalculable ana prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall from the table of truth.-They delve and tend but a plot in that vast and tceming kingdom, whilst those whom active life leaves with but few cramped hours of study can hardly come to know the very vastness of the field before them, or how intinitessimally small is the corner they can traverse at best. .****And thus I come often in my less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily remnants of the past, as if it were a fresh impeachment way of the men of our day in the way of systematic knowledge and eonsis- tent powers of thought; as if 1t were destined one day to over- whelm the great inheritance of mankind in prose and verse. *** Yes! they do kill the good book who deliver up their few and pre- cious hours of reading to the tri- vial book; they make it dead for them; they do what lies in them to destroy the precious life-blood of master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life; they spill that sea- soned life of man preserved and stored up in Books. For in the wilderness of books most men, certainly all busy men, mWst strict. iy choose. Ii they saturate their minds with the idler books, the good book, which Milton calls an imm mortality rath CT than life, is dead to them; it is book sealed up and buried"
 Sir John Herschel called books "the best society in every period of history" "Were l to pray for taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and shield against its ills, however things might so amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be taste for read. ing" Among his books, William Fiery Charming could say: "In the best books, great men talk to us, with us, and give us their most precious thoughts. Books are the voices of the distant and the dead Books are the true Jewellers They give to all who will faithful ly use them, the society and the presence of the best and greatesr of our race No matter how pool I am; no matter though the pros porous ot my own time will no1 enter my obscure dwelling, i learned men and poets will enter and take up their abode under my roof,-if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Para disc; and Shakespeare open to me the world of imagination and the workings of the human heart; and Franklin enrich me with his pract ical wisdoms,-f shall not pine fol want of intellectual eompanionship and l may become a cultivated man, though excluded from whar is called the best society in tbe place where 1 live"
 In his essay on "What Books tt Read" Harrison says:
 How does the trivial. provided it is the new, that which stares a us in the advertising columns o the day, crowd out the immorta poetry and pathos of the human race, vitiatlng our taste for those exquisite pieces which are house hold word, and weakening oul mental relish for the eternal work of genius! Old Homer is the very fountain-head Of pure poetic enjoy ment, of all that is spontaneous simple, native, and dignifsd il life. He takes us into the ambro