thing that comes to him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill
which Carlyle felt when he hurried home with the six volumes of
Gibbon's "History" under his arm, his mind just starving for want
of food, to devour them at the rate of one a day? A book should be
your very own before you can really get the taste of it, and unless
you have worked for it, you will never have the true inward pride
of possession.

If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I
have had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder
stained copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole
life as I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it
has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part
of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch
harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see
the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick
the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound
volume could ever take its place for me.

What a noble gateway this book forms through which one may approach
the study either of letters or of history! Milton, Machiavelli,
Hallam, Southey, Bunyan, Byron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive,
Hastings, Chatham--what nuclei for thought! With a good grip of each
how pleasant and easy to fill in all that lies between! The short,
vivid sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they
all throw a glamour round the subject and should make the least
studious of readers desire to go further. If Macaulay's hand cannot
lead a man upon those pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up
all hope of ever finding them.