While you converse with lords and dukes, I have their betters here, my books; Fixed in an elbow chair at ease I choose companions as I please. I'd rather have one single shelf Than all my friends, except yourself. For, after all that can be said, Our best companions are the dead. SHERIDAN _to Swift_. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking?--LOWELL, _Speech at Chelsea_. On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all things which men can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books? For, indeed, is it not verily the highest act of man's faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of man. The true thaumaturgic virtue by which man marks all things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the vesture of a book.--CARLYLE, _Hero Worship_. Yet it is just That here in memory of all books which lay Their sure foundations in the heart of man, ... That I should here assert their rights, assert Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce Their benediction, speak of them as powers For ever to be hallowed; only less For what we are and what we may become Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God, Or His pure word by miracle revealed. WORDSWORTH, _Prelude_. Take me to some lofty room, Lighted from the western sky, Where no glare dispels the gloom, Till the golden eve is nigh; Where the works of searching thought, Chosen books, may still impart What the wise of old have taught, What has tried the meek of heart; Books in long dead tongues that stirred Loving hearts in other climes; Telling to my eyes, unheard, Glorious deeds of olden times: Books that purify the thought, Spirits of the learned dead, Teachers of the little taught, Comforters when friends are fled. BARNES, _Poems of Rural Life_. A library is like a butcher's shop; it contains plenty of meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in it till some good cook comes along and says, 'Sir, I see by your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you have an excellent appetite!'--G. ELLIS, Lockhart's '_Scott_.' A library is itself a cheap university.--H. SIDGWICK, _Political Economy_.