3. The third and last class of objections to public libraries to which I shall direct your attention relates to the kind and quality of books circulated. These objections, which are usually made by educated and scholarly persons, are based on an entire misconception of the facts in the case. The objectors do not divest themselves of the old idea that libraries are established for the exclusive benefit of scholars; whereas the purpose of these is to furnish reading for all classes in the community. On no other principle would a general tax for their support be justifiable. The masses of a community have very little of literary and scholarly culture. They need more of this culture, and the purpose of the library is to develop and increase it. This is done by placing in their hands such books as they can read with pleasure and appreciate, and by stimulating them to acquire the _habit_ of reading. We must first interest the reader before we can educate him; and, to this end, must commence at his own standard of intelligence. The scholar, in his pride of intellect, forgets the progressive steps he took in his own mental development--the stories read to him in the nursery, the boy's book of adventure in which he revelled with delight, and the sentimental novel over which he shed tears in his youth. Our objector supposes that the masses will read books of his standard if they were not supplied with the books to which he objects; but he is mistaken. Shut up to this choice, they will read no books. When the habit of reading is once acquired, the reader's taste, and hence the quality of his reading, progressively improve. The standard histories, technical works of science, and even Shakespeare's plays and Milton's "Paradise Lost," are sealed books to a larger portion of every community than are willing to acknowledge the fact. "When a Boy," said John Quincy Adams, "I attempted ten times to read Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' I was mortified, even to the shedding of tears, that I could not conceive what it was that my father and mother so much admired in that book. I smoked tobacco and read Milton at the same time, and for the same motive: to find out what was the recondite charm in them that gave my father so much pleasure. After making myself sick four or five times with smoking, I mastered that accomplishment; but I did not master Milton. I was nearly thirty years of age when I first read 'Paradise Lost' with delight and astonishment." If our objectors mourn over the standard of books which are read by the public, they may be consoled by the fact that, as a rule, people read books better than themselves, and hence are benefited by reading. A book of a lower intellectual or moral standard than the reader's is thrown aside in disgust, to be picked up and read by a person still lower in the scale of mental and moral development.