rather, adding to its natural usury by living the more abundantly
while it lasts, joining another's life and thought to your own.

There are a few children in every generation, as Mr. Bagehot
reminds us, who think the natural thing to do with any book is to
read it. "There is an argument from design in the subject," as he
says; "if the book was not meant to be read for that purpose, for
what purpose was it meant?" These are the young eyes to which
books yield up great treasure, almost in spite of themselves, as
if they had been penetrated by some swift, enlarging power of
vision which only the young know. It is these youngsters to whom
books give up the long ages of history, "the wonderful series
going back to the times of old patriarchs with their flocks and
herds"--I am quoting Mr. Bagehot again--"the keen-eyed Greek,
the stately Roman, the watching Jew, the uncouth Goth, the horrid
Hun, the settled picture of the unchanging East, the restless
shifting of the rapid West, the rise of the cold and classical
civilization, its fall, the rough impetuous Middle Ages, the
vague warm picture of ourselves and home. When did we learn
these? Not yesterday nor today, but long ago, in the first dawn
of reason, in the original flow of fancy." Books will not yield
to us so richly when we are older. The argument from design
fails. We return to the staid authors we read long ago, and do
not find in them the vital, speaking images that used to lie
there upon the page. Our own fancy is gone, and the author never
had any. We are driven in upon the books meant to be read.

These are books written by human beings, indeed, but with no
general quality belonging to the kind--with a special tone and
temper, rather, a spirit out of the common, touched with a light