So, too, with an earlier Jewish writer, Saadia. No sadder title was ever chosen for a work than his _Sefer ha-Galui_--"Book of the Exiled." It is beyond our province to enter into his career, full of stress and storm. Between 933 and 937, driven from power, he retired to his library at Bagdad, just as Cincinnatus withdrew to his farm when Rome no longer needed him. During his retirement Saadia's best books were written. Why? Graetz tells us that "Saadia was still under the ban of excommunication. He had, therefore, no other sphere of action than that of an author." This is pitiful; but, again, it is not altogether true. Saadia's whole career was that of active authorship, when in power and out of power, as a boy, in middle life, in age: his constant thought was the service of truth, in so far as literature can serve it, and one may well think that he felt that the Crown of the Law was better worth wearing in prosperity, when he chose it out of other crowns, than in adversity, when it was the only crown within his reach. It was thus that King Solomon chose. So, in speaking of the solace of books, I have ventured to employ "solace" in an old, unusual sense. "Solace" has many meanings. It means "comfort in sorrow," and in Scotch law it denotes a compensation for wounded feelings, _solatium_, moral and intellectual damages in short. But in Chaucer and Spenser, "solace" is sometimes used as a synonym for joy and sweet exhilaration. This is an obsolete use, but let me hope that the thing is not obsolete. For one must go to his books for solace, not in mourning garb, but in gayest attire--to a wedding, not to a funeral. When John Clare wrote, I read in books for happiness, But books mistake the way to joy, he read for what he ought to have brought, and thus he failed to find his goal. The library has been beautifully termed the "bridal chamber of the mind." So, too, the Apocrypha puts it in the Wisdom of Solomon: Wisdom is radiant.... Her I loved and sought out from my youth, And I sought to take her for my bride, And I became enamored of her beauty. * * * * * When I am come into my house, I shall find rest with her, For converse with her hath no bitterness, And to live with her hath no pain. * * * * * O God of the fathers, ... Give me wisdom, that sitteth by Thee on Thy throne. MEDIEVAL WAYFARING