Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from romances? Certainly no!--never, except in joke. It's against my theories and ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by _reading too much_, or out of proportion to what we _think_. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as much--should have had stronger and better exercised faculties. The fact is, that the _ne plus ultra_ of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Americans call 'whittling'.--E. B. BROWNING (Letter to R. H. Horne). BOOKS AND MEN He that sets out on the journey of life, with a profound knowledge of books, but a shallow knowledge of men, with much sense of others, but little of his own, will find himself as completely at a loss on occasions of common and of constant recurrence, as a Dutchman without his pipe, a Frenchman without his mistress, an Italian without his fiddle, or an Englishman without his umbrella.--C. C. COLTON. _Lacon._ Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. W. SHAKESPEARE. _Love's Labour's Lost._ BOOKS AND LIFE Who, loving leisure and his studious ease, And books, and what of noblest lore they bring, Will not confess that sometimes, called aside To humbler work and less delightful tasks, He has been tempted to exclaim in heart-- 'How pleasant were it might we only dwell, And ever hold sweet converse undisturbed Thus with the choicest spirits of the world In council, and in letters, and in arms. Easy to live with, always at command, They come at bidding, at our word depart, Friends whose society not ever cloys. Glorious it were by intercourse with these To learn whatever men have thought or done, And travel the great orb of knowledge round. But oh! how most unwelcome the constraint, How harsh the summons bidding us to pause, And for a season turn from our high toils, From that serener atmosphere come down, And grow perforce acquainted with the woe, The strife, the discord of the actual world, And all the ignoble work beneath the sun.' * * * * *