F I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history -with the wisest, the wittiest-with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations-a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him. There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. It civilises the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarous. Herschel. |