One hears with dismay that about three-fourths of the books drawn from our popular libraries are novels. Now, while such aimless reading, merely to be amused, is doubtless better than no reading at all, it is unquestionably true that over-much reading of fiction, especially at an early age, enervates the mind, weakens the will, makes dreamers instead of thinkers and workers, and fills the imagination with morbid and unreal views of life. Yet the vast consumption of novels is due more to the cheapness and wide diffusion of such works, and the want of wise direction in other fields, than to any original tendency on the part of the young. People will always read the most, that which is most put before them, if only the style be attractive. The mischief that is done by improper books is literally immeasureable. The superabundance of cheap fictions in the markets creates and supplies an appetite which should be directed by wise guidance into more improving fields. A two-fold evil follows upon the reading of every unworthy book; in the first place, it absorbs the time which should be bestowed upon a worthy one; and secondly, it leaves the mind and heart unimproved, instead of conducing to the benefit of both. As there are few books more elevating than a really good novel, so there are none more fruitful of evil than a bad one. And what of the newspaper? it may be asked. When I consider for how much really good literature we are beholden to the daily and weekly press, how indispensable is its function as purveyor of the news of the world, how widely it has been improved in recent years, I cannot advise quarreling with the bridge that brings so many across the gulf of ignorance. Yet the newspaper, like the book, is to be read sparingly, and with judgment. It is to be used, not abused. I call that an abuse which squanders the precious and unreturning hours over long chronicles of depravity. The murders, the suicides, the executions, the divorces, the criminal trials, are each and all so like one another that it is only a wanton waste of time to read them. The morbid style in which social disorders of all kinds are written up in the sensational press, with staring headlines to attract attention, ought to warn off every healthy mind from their perusal. Every scandal in society that can be brought to the surface is eagerly caught up and paraded, while the millions of people who lead blameless lives of course go unnoticed and unchronicled. Such journals thus inculcate the vilest pessimism, instead of a wholesome and honest belief in the average decency of human nature. The prolixity of the narrative, too, is always in monstrous disproportion to its importance. "Does not the burning of a metropolitan theatre," says a great writer, "take above a million times as much telling as the creation of a world?" Here is where the art of skipping is to be rigorously applied. Read the newspaper by headlines only,--skipping all the murders, all the fires,