A young man's very desultory reading will perhaps be one of the most useful means for finding what his life's career should be. Knowing himself, or being known, as has been said, by those directing him, and by his own discursive reading having learnt what work for his peculiar abilities is open for him in the world, he probably will judge quite readily what line of study he should at first pursue, and following out this clue, at first by the aid of judicious external guidance, he will, with ever-increasing self-reliance and discrimination, proceed to fulfil the requirements of education and the inclination of his own mental disposition. This method of development is the natural order by which intellectual growth, by means of books, or any other means, proceeds. To make a choice of certain hundred books for any man's perusal, in his youth or afterwards, is but a feat of cleverness, arousing curiosity or wonder, but evolving nothing--ending in the choice. A man may be possessed of any number of good books; and possibly a thousand books might be selected, all of which would be by general consent called excellent, and worth possessing; and perhaps he would be none the better for them all. Young men do not require a hundred books at once. Indeed the fewer well-selected books a youth has to begin with, the more safe he is against excessive loss of time. His most important question is not, what shall I read? but, what need I read? The student's care should be to read as little, and to think as much as possible. Thus, he will find what thing it is that he at any time immediately requires to know, and he will make this pressing need the object of his next acquirement in books. This method tends to education; it develops mental power, and makes a cultivated man. A hundred books procured and read without appropriate sympathy, and interest, and thought, will merely make an animated bookcase of the man. Not only should the student's books be few, but as he reads he should be constantly upon his guard. Most readers read to be informed or to be entertained; and books of information are absorbed as if all printed statements must of course be true, or even if not true must, as a record, be worth knowing. This omnivorous, careless style of reading is a grievous waste of life and energy. Were books read with critical, enquiring thought, the time misspent in reading would be wholesomely reduced, and readers would increase in mental power in due proportion to their increased information.