"They were true lovers of all that was best and most beautiful," answered his father gravely. "Even their aristocracy felt it no disgrace to toil to perfect a fine art. To make that which was excellent more excellent still was the aim of rich and poor. Nobles, artisans, barefooted friars worked together towards that common goal. It was an Italian prince, Nicholas V, a man who afterward became Pope, who founded the Vatican Library and collected five thousand books, at a time, you must remember, when a book was a rare and almost priceless treasure. To him we owe the preservation of many a valuable old manuscript that might otherwise have been destroyed. Five thousand volumes was in those days a vast number to get together." "Our public libraries would not think so now," smiled Paul. "No, because at present books are so easily within reach that we scarcely appreciate them. We certainly read only a very small proportion of them." "I know I don't read many," said Paul soberly. "You will read more as you grow older, son," returned his father kindly. "But most of us are intellectually lazy; even grown-up persons devote a good part of their short lives to reading things that profit them nothing." "Things like the _March Hare_, for example," suggested Paul facetiously. "Many a worse thing than the _March Hare_, I'm afraid," his father responded. "We seem to think we have unlimited time before us, and that there is no hurry about reading the good things we mean to read before we die; so we waste our precious moments on every sort of trash--cheap novels, worthless magazines, newspaper gossip, and before we know it, our lives are gone. I overlook your being so foolish; but for me it is inexcusable. The Italians of the Renaissance did not give themselves over to such folly. They put their hearts seriously into building up their age and generation. Lorenzo de Medici dragged from the corners of Europe and Asia some two hundred Greek and Latin manuscripts. Other Florentines, Venetians, Romans collected private libraries. Princes of the land turned their wealth not to their own idle pleasure but to financing Gutenburg's invention and establishing printing presses which the culture and brain of the country controlled. There was a printing press at the Vatican itself, and scholars who were paid large salaries met in consultation concerning the literature printed. The best artists contributed their skill to the undertaking. Indeed, it was a disagreement about some theological work that Martin Luther had come from Germany to help with that sent him back home in a temper. And not only was the matter printed carefully scrutinized but also every detail of its production was thought out--the size of the page, the size of the type, the width of the margins, the quality of the paper, the variety of type to be used. What wonder that under such conditions printing was rapidly transformed from a trade to an art. When we think of the