The great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed still what they were. But though their positive value is unchanged, their relative value, when compared with the whole mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been constantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without _Oedipus_ and _Medea_, while he possesses _Othello_ and _Hamlet_. If he knows nothing of _Pyrgopolynices_ and _Thraso_, he is familiar with _Bobadil_, and _Bessus_, and _Pistol_, and _Parolles_. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of Pascal. If he is shut out from _Nephelococcygia_, he may take refuge in _Lilliput_.... We believe that the books which have been written in the languages of Western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty years--translations from the ancient languages of course included,--are of greater value than all the books which at the beginning of that period were extant in the world.--LORD MACAULAY. _Lord Bacon._ A SORT OF THIRD ESTATE Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or, rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation--the act of thought--is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled, the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly, the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.--R. W. EMERSON. _The American Scholar._ OLD AND NEW BOOKS