Here lies the chief cause of our embarrassment. It is difficult to provide books precisely adapted to the needs of our peculiar constituency. The Superintendent of Instruction and the Counselors have felt this from the beginning. Heavy and elaborate books discourage a class which we are anxious to lure into the love of literature. Books too much abridged fail to satisfy more mature minds. Old books may be behind the times, or, although acknowledged to be standards, may not for the reasons above given be fully adapted to our readers. As for new books—every one knows how hard it is to secure them, and how easily a flippant criticism may destroy the confidence of the uninitiated in them. Notwithstanding these embarrassments we have tried to do our best, providing old books where the council could agree upon them, and new books where they seemed to be absolutely necessary. It is not to be expected that any book, especially any new book, will meet with universal approval. As for criticism—well, who knoweth the ways of critics with the new books! Did not Samuel Taylor Coleridge say of Burke’s essay on “The Sublime and the Beautiful,” “It seems to me a poor thing?” Did not Horace Walpole call Goldsmith “an inspired idiot?” Did not Dr. Johnson pronounce Fielding a “blockhead?” Does not Hume affirm that “no page of Shakspere is without glaring faults?” Was not the manuscript of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” rejected because the critic to whom it was submitted pronounced it “without interest?” Some books of the C. L. S. C. have excited unfavorable criticism—religious books by those who do not care to read religious books at all, and think it an impertinence to obtrude them upon the general reader; certain scientific books because “not up to the times,” or the critic being himself a scientific specialist is certain that the views of our specialist are “unsound.” Concerning one of the books on the list, a correspondent says: “It is useless—worse than useless; it is harmful. Its style is involved, obscure, bombastic, florid, ‘highfalutin’,’ diffuse, disfigured by straining after effect, by the effort for fine writing, and by many evil features carefully to be avoided.” I do not quote the above as a specimen of classic English, but as indicating the temper of the writer, whose letter is accompanied by nineteen manuscript pages of closely written criticisms upon the condemned volume.