On the whole, it is believed to be better for young men who have little leisure for reading, and who wish to make the most they can of that little, to abandon novels wholly. If they begin to read them, it is difficult to tell to what an excess they may go; but if they never read one in their whole lives, they will sustain no great loss. Would not the careful study of a single chapter of Watts's Improvement of the Mind, be of more real practical value than the perusal of all that the best novel writers,--Walter Scott not excepted,--have ever written? 9. OF NEWSPAPERS. Among other means both of mental and moral improvement at the present day, are periodical publications. The multiplicity and cheapness of these sources of knowledge renders them accessible to all classes of the community. And though their influence were to be as evil as the frogs of Egypt we could not escape it. Doubtless they produce much evil, though their tendency on the whole is believed to be salutary. But wisdom is necessary, in order to derive the greatest amount of benefit from them; and here, perhaps, more than any where else, do the young need the counsels of experience. I am not about to direct what particular newspapers and magazines they ought to read; this is a point which their friends and relatives must assist them in determining. My purpose is simply to point to a few principles which should guide both the young and those who advise them, in making the selection. 1. In the first place, do not seek for your guide a paper which is just commencing its existence, unless you have reason to think the character of its conductors is such as you approve. 2. Avoid, unless your particular occupation requires it, a _business_ paper. Otherwise your head will become so full of 'arrivals' and 'departures,' and 'prices current,' and 'news,' that you will hardly find room for any thing else. 3. Do not take a paper which dwells on nothing but the details of human depravity. It will indeed, for a time, call forth a sensibility to the woes of mankind; but the final result will probably be a stupidity and insensibility to human suffering which you would give much to remove. 4. Avoid those papers which, awed by the cry for _short_ and _light_ articles, have rendered their pages mere columns of insulated facts or useless scraps, or what is still worse, of unnatural and sickening love stories.