Confucius is said to have described himself as a man who "in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgot his food, who in the joy of its attainment forgot his sorrows, and did not even perceive that old age was coming on." Yet, if this could be said by the Arabs and the Chinese, what language can be strong enough to express the gratitude we ought to feel for the advantages we enjoy! We do not appreciate, I think, our good fortune in belonging to the nineteenth century. Sometimes, indeed, one may even be inclined to wish that one had not lived quite so soon, and to long for a glimpse of the books, even the school-books, of one hundred years hence. A hundred years ago not only were books extremely expensive and cumbrous, but many of the most delightful were still uncreated--such as the works of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, and Trollope, not to mention living authors. How much more interesting science has become especially, if I were to mention only one name, through the genius of Darwin! Renan has characterized this as a most amusing century; I should rather have described it as most interesting: presenting us as it does with an endless vista of absorbing problems; with infinite opportunities; with more interest and less danger than surrounded our less fortunate ancestors. Cicero described a room without books, as a body without a soul. But it is by no means necessary to be a philosopher to love reading. Reading, indeed, is by no means necessarily study. Far from it. "I put," says Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his excellent article on the "Choice of Books," "I put the poetic and emotional side of literature as the most needed for daily use." In the prologue to the _Legende of Goode Women_, Chaucer says: "And as for me, though that I konne but lyte, On bokes for to rede I me delyte, And to him give I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have him in reverence, So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But yt be seldome on the holy day, Save, certynly, when that the monthe of May Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge, Farwel my boke and my devocion." But I doubt whether, if he had enjoyed our advantages, he could have been so certain of tearing himself away, even in the month of May.