The lives of great men have always been of interest not merely for the sake of satisfying curiosity, but because of the value of further knowledge about their habits, thoughts, and actions. The personality of a great man attracts us; perhaps through reading an intimate account of his life we may see into the reasons for his superiority, possibly we may find the key to the secret of power. So much can be learned from biography that it seems absurd how little importance is given to the subject even in our best colleges. Yet Christianity rests upon the life and teachings of one Personality, nation after nation has been saved or ruined by the deeds of one individual, wisdom and contentment have been found by the great minds of the world. By considering their lives, their principles, their virtues, and their failings we can get an extraordinary insight into the problems of happiness and wholesome living. Carlyle rightly called a Great Man "the most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth; a man of 'genius' as we call it; the Soul of a Man actually sent down from the skies with a God's-message to us." To see such a man at his work, at his play, thinking, dreaming, attaining greatness little by little or in a flash, to spend hours with him in thought, learning from him or from his friends and critics wherein he proved his power and how he labored to express it: to be in such close touch with one of the giants of the earth is a privilege which we must not dare to neglect. The opportunity is ours, ours be the blame and the failure if we neglect it. Boswell Cellini Chesterton Eckermann Evelyn Fields Franklin Lewes Lockhart Pellico Pepys Plato Pliny Plutarch Renan Southey Stephen Villari ESSAY Originally intended, as its name implies, to be a tentative effort rather than a finished production, the essay has none the less become one of the most perfect forms of prose. Its subject and the treatment thereof may be of almost any nature, provided it is well wrought and finished in style; for an essay is the artistic consideration of a topic, often critical, as in the case of Matthew Arnold's masterpieces, humorous, as with Lamb, philosophical as with Emerson, Carlyle, and Ruskin, and so on through a dozen diverse manners. In general the essay is brief, critical, and scholarly, and bears the stamp of the author's personality and individual opinion in his most polished style. Bacon and Montaigne were the first to use it, Milton followed, and then Addison and Steele brought it to a high state of light and pungent perfection. Lamb, Macaulay, and Stevenson are perhaps the leaders in its later development. The work of such writers as Walton and Gilbert White, though not perhaps within the stricter limits of the definition, is closely related to the essay in tone and style.