“Yes,” said I. “But the chief danger of all that class of reading is its _easiness_, and the indolent, careless mental habit it induces. A great deal of the reading of young people on all days is really reading to no purpose, its object being merely present amusement. It is a listless yielding of the mind to be washed over by a stream which leaves no fertilizing properties, and carries away by constant wear the good soil of thought. I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead, therefore, of objecting to any particular class of books for Sunday reading, I should say in general that reading merely for pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against. That which inspires no thought, no purpose, which steals away all our strength and energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the reading I would object to.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Sacred music.] “So of music. I do not see the propriety of confining one’s self to technical sacred music. Any grave, solemn, thoughtful, or pathetic music has a proper relation to our higher spiritual nature, whether it be printed in a church service-book or on secular sheets. On me, for example, Beethoven’s Sonatas have a far more deeply religious influence than much that has religious names and words. Music is to be judged of by its effects.” * * * * * [Sidenote: A good picture.] For a picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something of the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY. [Sidenote: Letters.] Those long letters in which thoughtful people who live in retired situations delight; letters, not of outward events, but of sentiments and opinions, the phases of the inner life. AGNES OF SORRENTO. [Sidenote: The artist’s mission.] What higher honor or grace can befall a creature than to be called upon to make visible to men that beauty of invisible things which is divine and eternal? * * * * * [Sidenote: Hymns.] “A hymn is a singing angel, and goes walking through the earth, scattering the devils before it. Therefore he who creates hymns imitates the most excellent and lovely works of our Lord God, who made the angels. These hymns watch our chamber-door, they sit upon our pillow, they sing to us when we awake; and therefore our master was resolved to sow the minds of his young people with them, as our lovely Italy is sown with the seeds of all-colored flowers.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Music the language of Italy.] There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music. DRED. [Sidenote: The universal book.]