The priestess then filled some small leather vessels with this fantastic water, and gave them to Panurge and Pantagruel, saying: "If you have observed what is written above the temple gates, you at last know that truth is hidden in wine. Be yourselves the expounders of your undertaking, and now go, friends, in the protection of that intellectual sphere, the centre of which is in all places and the circumference nowhere, which we call God. What has become of the art of calling down from heaven, thunder and celestial fire, once invented by the wise Prometheus? You have certainly lost it. Your philosophers who complain that all things were written by the ancients, and that nothing is left for them to invent, are evidently wrong. When they shall give their labour and study to search out, with prayer to the sovereign God (whom the Egyptians named the Hidden and Concealed, and invoking Him by that name, besought Him to manifest and discover Himself to them), He will grant to them, partly guided by good Lanterns, knowledge of Himself and His creatures. For all philosophers and ancient sages have considered two things necessary for the sure and pleasant pursuit of the way of divine knowledge and choice of wisdom--the goodness of God, and the company of men. "Now go, in the name of God, and may He guide you." * * * * * CHARLES READE Hard Cash Charles Reade made his first appearance as an author comparatively late in life. He was the son of an English squire, born at Ipsden on June 8, 1814, and was educated for the Bar, being entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1843. His literary career began as dramatist, and it is significant that it was his own wish that the word "dramatist" should stand first in the description of his works on his tombstone. His maiden effort in stage literature, "The Ladies' Battle," was produced in 1851; but it was not until November, 1852, with the appearance of "Masks and Faces"--the story which he afterwards adapted into prose under the title of "Peg Woffington"--that Reade became famous as a playwright. From 1852 until his death, which occurred on April 11, 1884, Reade's life is mainly a catalogue of novels and dramas. Like many of Charles Reade's works, "Hard Cash, a Matter-of-Fact Romance," is a novel with a purpose, and was written with the object of exposing abuses connected with the lunacy laws and the management of private lunatic asylums. Entitled "Very Hard Cash," it first appeared serially in the pages of "All the Year Round," then under the editorship of Charles Dickens, and although its success in that form was by no means extraordinary, its popularity on its publication in book form in 1863 was well deserved and emphatic. The appearance of "Hard Cash," which is a sequel to a comparatively trivial tale, "Love me Little, Love me Long," provoked much hostile