the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of literature; reverent readers, who treat a book as they would treat a great and good man, considerately and politely, carefully brushing the dust from a beloved volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt harm; careless and rough readers, who will turn down books on their faces to keep the place, tumble them over in heaps, cram them into shelves never meant for them, scribble upon the margins, dogs-ear the leaves, or even cut them with their fingers--all brutal and intolerable practices, totally unworthy of any one pretending to civilization. To those who have well learned the art of reading, what inexhaustible delights does the world of books contain! With Milton, "to behold the bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies;" to journey through far countries with Marco Polo; to steer across an unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of the frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane; to study the manners of ancient nations with Herodotus; to live over again the life of Greece and Rome with Plutarch's heroes; to trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and Mommsen; to pursue the story of the modern world in the pages of Hume, Macaulay, Thiers and Sismondi, and our own Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft; to enjoy afresh the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the polished and splendid diction of Cicero; to drink in the wisdom of philosophers, and to walk with Socrates, Plato and the stoics through the groves of Academia; to be kindled by the saintly utterances of prophets and apostles, St. Paul's high reasoning of immortality, or the seraphic visions of St. John; to study the laws that govern communities with the great publicists, or the economy of nations with Adam Smith and Stuart Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:--to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter Scott, the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life-pictures of George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo, and the masterly delineations of Thackeray; to hang over the absorbing biographies of Dr. Franklin, Walter Scott and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel the inspiration of the great poets of all ages, from Homer down to Tennyson; to read Shakespeare--a book that is in itself almost a university:--is not all