We shall not enter into any historical details--for this is not a Monologue for the Quarterly--but we simply assert, that in the times we allude to (don't mention dates) there was little or no reading in England. There was neither the Reading Fly nor the Reading Public. What could this be owing to, but the non-existence of Periodicals? What elderly-young lady could be expected to turn from house affairs, for example, to Spenser's Fairy Queen? It is a long, long, long poem, that Fairy Queen of Spenser's; nobody, of course, ever dreamt of getting through it; but though you may have given up all hope of getting through a poem or a wood, you expect to be able to find your way back again to the spot where you unluckily got in; not so, however, with the Fairy Queen. Beautiful it is indeed, most exquisitely and unapproachably beautiful in many passages, especially about ladies and ladies' love more than celestial, for Venus loses in comparison her lustre in the sky; but still people were afraid to get into it then as now; and "heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb," lay buried in dust. As to Shakspeare, we cannot find many traces of him in the domestic occupations of the English gentry during the times alluded to; nor do we believe that the character of Hamlet was at all relished in their halls, though perhaps an occasional squire chuckled at the humours of Sir John Falstaff. We have Mr. Wordsworth's authority for believing that Paradise Lost was a dead letter, and John Milton virtually anonymous. We need say no more. Books like these, huge heavy vols. lay with other lumber in the garrets and libraries. As yet, Periodical Literature was not; and the art of printing seems long to have preceded the art of reading. It did not occur to those generations that books were intended to be read by people in general, but only by the select few. Whereas now, reading is not only one of the luxuries, but absolutely one of the necessaries of life, and we now no more think of going without our book than without our breakfast; lunch consists now of veal-pies and Venetian Bracelets--we still dine on Roast-beef, but with it, instead of Yorkshire pudding, a Scotch novel--Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore sweeten tea for us--and in "Course of Time" we sup on a Welsh rabbit and a Religious Poem.