Shall we imagine that we will pay a visit to a few of the alcoves in the great hall of history, and take down from the shelves, here one book, and here another, reading their names, and learning the names of those who wrote the books? We do not learn very much about a book simply by taking it down from a shelf, and turning over a few of the pages; but we do learn something. Many of you will read a certain number of these books some day. All of us may know something about them. At least we all can remember that famous histories, as well as other books, have helped to make this delightful, thrilling, difficult, very important world in which we live. Now what books shall we take down from the shelves? Suppose we begin with a book written by someone you know,--Sir Walter Raleigh. When Sir Walter Raleigh came back from one of his sea expeditions, on which, after the fashion of the times in which he lived, he had been more or less of a buccaneer, he was put into prison in {181} the Tower of London on account of a political quarrel in which he was involved. Time spent in prison seems very long, especially for a man like Raleigh. So he began to write a _History of the World_. He never finished it, but he got as far on as B.C. 130. You can handle to-day one of the great books in which Raleigh's _History of the World_ is printed; but very few people ever read it. But at the end of what Raleigh wrote of the _History of the World_, he penned a noble sentence which people have never forgotten. Here it is: "O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast perswaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic jacet_!"