And being on the subject of books and the choice of books, let me put before you a proverb, and in this reading age a very serious one; it comes to us from Italy, and it says: _There is no worse robber than a bad book_.[133] Indeed, none worse, nor so bad; other robbers may spoil us of our money; but this robber of our “goods”—of our time at any rate, even assuming the book to be only negatively bad; but of how much more, of our principles, our faith, our purity of heart, supposing its badness to be positive, and not negative only. And one more on books may fitly find place here: _Dead men open living men’s eyes_; at least I take it to be such; and to contain implicitly the praise of history, and an announcement of the instruction which it will yield us.[134] Here are one or two prudent words on education. _A child may have too much of its mother’s blessing_; yes, for that blessing may be no blessing, but rather a curse, if it take the shape of foolish and fond indulgence; and in the same strain is this German: _Better the child weep than the father_.[135] And this, like many others, is found in so many tongues, that it cannot be ascribed to one rather than another: _More springs in the garden than the gardener ever sowed_.[136] It is a proverb for many, but most of all for parents and teachers, that they lap not themselves in a false dream of security, as though nothing was at work or growing in the minds of the young in their guardianship, but what they themselves had sown there, as though there was not another who might very well have sown his tares beside and among any good seed of their sowing. At the same time the proverb has also its happier side. There may be, there often are, better things also in this garden than ever the earthly gardener set there, seeds of the more immediate sowing of God. In either of its aspects this proverb is one deserving to be laid to heart. [Sidenote: Gold’s worth is gold.]