N treating of the reading of books, we will not

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refer to all kinds of books. We will limit our remarks to what are called literary works, or works that are expected to be characterized by art and taste in composition. Guided by that

definition, we will include books relating to mental philosophy, history, biography, poetry, fiction, and descriptions of men and scenery; and we will omit treatises concerning scientific subjects, particular callings and trades, and theological doctrines and sentiments.

Every intelligent person in the present day is impressed with the great advantages to be derived

from reading. We need not, therefore, waste any time in showing these advantages. But we will try to revive your impression by drawing a contrast between the man of no culture and the man of high culture.

Look first at the poor unlettered rustic. He has never been taught to think or read. His intellect is still confined in his five senses. It takes in nothing but dull images of the byways along which he plods, the beasts of the field, the forms of his relatives and neighbours, and the slow-paced routine of agricultural life. The distant and the past are to him a complete void. His soul is tied to the present, and to that small spot of the earth's surface on which he moves in his daily rounds.

Look now at the accomplished man of letters. He sits in his quiet study with clear head, sympathetic heart, and lively fancy. The walls around him are lined with books on every subject, and in almost every tongue. He is, indeed, a man of magical powers, and these books are his magical volumes full of wonder-working spells. When he opens one of these and reads with eye and soul intent, in a few minutes the objects around him fade from his senses,

and his soul is rapt away into distant regions, or into bygone times. It may be a book descriptive of other lands; and then he feels himself, perhaps, amid the biting frost and snowy ice-hills of the polar winter, or in the fierce heat and luxuriant vegetation of the equator, panting up the steeps of the Alps with the holiday tourist, or exploring the mazes of the Nile with Livingstone or Baker. Or, perchance, it may be a history of England; and then the tide of time runs back, and he finds himself among our stouthearted ancestors: he enters heartily into all their toil and struggles; he passes amid the fires of Smithfield at the Reformation; he shares in all the wrangling, and dangers, and suspense of the Revolution; he watches with eager gaze the steady progress of the nation, until he sees British freedom become the envy of Europe, and British enterprise secure a foothold in every quarter of the globe. Or perhaps the book may be one of our great English classics,— Shakespeare, Bacon, or Carlyle,—and immediately he is in the closest contact with a spirit far larger than his own: his mind grasps its grand ideas, his heart imbibes its glowing sentiments, until he finds himself dilated, refined, inspired—a greater and a nobler