Books of table-talk have this advantage over most others; being the best companions for the moment, they can be taken up and laid down without loss, and when sensible are best whetstones for the wits. With the essayists, the poets, books of letters and lives, one's library were always alive and inviting. Good for moments these are always good: we may open by chance, dip anywhere, read in any order, begin at the last paragraph and read backward as well; obvious consecutiveness being of less consequence. Nor do I find the logic the worse when thus seemingly broken and obscure, since each paragraph is a unit standing apart yet all related in the perspective which the reader commands. We could not spare from our galaxy the great essayists and moralists, Pliny, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne Cowley, Coleridge, and the rest; each delineating in his proper way that antique faith in man and the world, which being one and universal in essence, unites all mankind. We know the history of these pieces of life, these experiences recorded for us by their inspired authors, as if themselves were scribes of the spirit and committed it to letters for our especial benefit. Any library is an attraction. And there is an indescribable delight--who has not felt it that deserves the name of scholar--in mousing at choice among the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and finding the oldest of these sometimes newest of the new, fresher, more suggestive than the book just published and praised in the reviews. Nor is the pleasure scarcely less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening by preference at the end rather than title-page, and seizing the author's conclusions at a glance. Very few books repay the reading in course. Nor can we excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to copy passages into our common places, for quotation, proverbs, meditation, or other uses. A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers. One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned. "Books cannot make the mind, Which we must bring apt to be set aright, Yet do they rectify it in that kind And touch it so as that they turn that way Where judgment lies. And though we may not find The certain place of truth, yet do they stay And entertain us near about the same, And give the soul the best delight that may Encheer it most, and make our spirits enflame To thoughts of glory and to worthy deeds."