“In all our estimation of the various qualities of books, if it be true that our reading assists our life, it is true also that our life assists our reading. If we let our spirit talk to us in undistracted moments--if we commune with friendly, serious Nature, face to face, often--if we pursue honourable aims in a steady progress--if we learn how a man’s best work falls below his thought, yet how still his failure prompts a tenderer love of his thought--if we live in sincere, frank relations with some few friends, joying in their joy, hearing the tale and sharing the pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of honest, household sensibility--if we look about us on character, marking distinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting of a hundred questions concerning what is out of our ken:--if we live thus, we shall be good readers and critics of books, and improving ones.” The second and third of these essays are on Biography and Fiction respectively and principally; treating, however, of collateral subjects as well. Deep is the relation between the life shadowed forth in a biography, and the life in a man’s brain which he shadows forth in a fiction--when that fiction is of the highest order, and written in love, is beheld even by the writer himself with reverence. Delightful, surely, it must be; yes, awful too, to read to-day the embodiment of a man’s noblest thought, to follow the hero of his creation through his temptations, contests, and victories, in a world which likewise is-- “All made out of the carver’s brain;”