necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless
study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the
Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read
them at all. "There are the worshippers with offerings, and the
worshippers with mortifications; and again the worshippers with
enthusiastic devotion; so there are those the wisdom of whose
reading is their worship, men of subdued passions and severe
manners;--This world is not for him who doth not worship; and
where, O Arjoon, is there another?" Certainly, we do not need to
be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts
to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if
he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only be
enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which
each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot
read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even
make us dangerous to existing institutions,--such call I good
books.

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not
necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with
the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares
are palmed off under a thousand disguises. "The way to trade,"
as a pedler once told me, "is to _put it right through_," no
matter what it is, anything that is agreed on.

"You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray."