Always it is to be remembered that the classics afford us the means of measuring the worth of what we read. He who pauses to consider a little will see at once something of what is meant by this. He will realize the wide difference there is between familiarity with the permanent literature of the world and acquaintance with the most sensational and widely discussed books of to-day. A man may be a virtuous citizen and a good husband and father, with intelligence in his business and common sense in the affairs of life, and yet be utterly ignorant of how Achilles put the golden tress into the hand of dead Patroclus, or of the stratagem by which Iphigenia saved the life of Orestes at Tauris, or of the love of Palamon and Arcite for Emilie the fair, or of whom Gudrun married and whom she loved, or of how Sancho Panza governed his island, or of the ill-fated loves of Romeo and Juliet, or of the agony of Othello, or of Hamlet, or Lear, or Perdita, or Portia. The knowledge of none of these is necessary to material existence, and it is possible to make a creditable figure in the world without it. Yet we are all conscious that the man who is not aware of these creations which are so much more real than the majority of the personages that stalk puppet-like across the pages of history, has missed something of which the loss makes his life definitely poorer. We cannot but feel the enrichment of mind and feeling which results from our having in classic pages made the acquaintance with these gracious beings and shared their adventures and their emotions. Suppose that the books most noisily lauded to-day were to be tried by the same test. Is a man better for knowing with Zola all the diseased genealogy of the Rougon-Macquart family, morbid, criminal, and foul? Is not the mind cleaner and saner if it has never been opened to the entertainment of Poznyscheff, Hedda Gabler, Dr. Rank, Mademoiselle de Maupin, Oswald Alving, or any of this unclean tribe? It is not that a strong or well-developed man will ignore the crime or the criminals of the world; but it is not necessary to gloat over either. It is not difficult to learn all that it is necessary to know about yellow fever, cholera, or leprosy, without passing days and nights in the pest hospitals.