A congenial book can be taken up by any lover of books, with the certainty of its transporting the reader within a few minutes to a region immeasurably removed from that which he desires to quit. The shape or pattern of the magic carpet whereon he flies through space and time, is of no consequence. The son of science is rapt by a problem; the philosopher by an abstruse speculation; the antiquary is carried centuries back into the chivalric past; the lover of poetry is borne upon glittering wings into the future. The charm works well for all. Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.... It is not a very high claim that is here set forth on behalf of Literature--that of Pass-time, and yet what a blessed boon even that is! Conceive the hours of _inertia_ (a thing different from idleness) that it has mercifully consumed for us! hours wherein nothing could be done, nothing, perhaps, be _thought_, of our own selves, by reason of some impending calamity. Wisely does the dentist furnish his hateful antechamber with books of all sorts. Who could abide for an hour in such an apartment with nothing to occupy his thoughts save the expectation of that wrench to come!... Indeed, it must be confessed that where Books fail as an anodyne, is rather in cases of physical than of mental pain. Through the long watches of the night, and by the bedside of some slowly dying dear one, it is easier to obtain forgetfulness--the only kind of rest that it may be safe or possible to take--by means of reading, than to do so when one is troubled with mere toothache. Nor does this arise from selfishness--since we would endure twenty toothaches, if they might give ease to the sufferer--but because the sharpness of the pang prevents our applying our mind to anything else; while the deep dull sorrow of the soul permits an intervening thought, and over it slides another, and then another, until a layer of such is formed, and the mind of the reader gets wholly free, for a brief but blessed time, partitioned off, as it were, from his real trouble.--J. PAYN. _Chambers's Journal_, 1864. LOUNGING BOOKS I sometimes wish for a catalogue of lounging books--books that one takes up in the gout, low spirits, _ennui_, or when in waiting for company. Some novels, gay poetry, odd whimsical authors, as Rabelais, &c. A catalogue raisonné of such might be itself a good lounging book.--H. WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD. _Letters._ TO DRIVE THE NIGHT AWAY So whan I saw I might not slepe, Til now late, this other night, Upon my bedde I sat upright, And bad oon reche me a book, A romaunce, and he hit me took To rede and dryve the night away; For me thoghte it better play Than playen either at chesse or tables. G. CHAUCER. _The Book of the Duchesse._ READING IN BED