famous races in the world; and it should inspire a love for the
reading of good literature.

No satisfactory definition of "literature" has ever been framed.
Milton's conception of it was "something so written to after times, as
they should not willingly let it die." Shakespeare's working
definition of literature was something addressed not to after times
but to an eternal present, and invested with such a touch of nature as
to make the whole world kin. When he says of Duncan:--

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"

he touches the feelings of mortals of all times and opens the door for
imaginative activity, causing us to wonder why life should be a fitful
fever, followed by an incommunicable sleep. Much of what we call
literature would not survive the test of Shakespeare's definition; but
true literature must appeal to imagination and feeling as well as to
intellect. No mere definition can take the place of what may be called
a feeling for literature. Such a feeling will develop as the best
English poetry and prose: are sympathetically read. Wordsworth had
this feeling when he defined the poets as those:--

"Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares."

The Mission of English Literature.--It is a pertinent question to
ask, What has English literature to offer?

In the first place, to quote Ben Jonson:--

"The thirst that from the soul cloth rise