When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have
nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation."

Sir John Herschel tells an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure
derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order. In a certain
village the blacksmith having got hold of Richardson's novel, _Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded_, used to sit on his anvil in the long summer evenings and
read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by no means a short
book, but they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn
of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets
them living long and happily together according to the most approved
rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and
procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells a-ringing.

"The lover of reading," says Leigh Hunt, "will derive agreeable terror
from _Sir Bertram_ and the _Haunted Chamber_; will assent with, delighted
reason to every sentence in _Mrs. Barbauld's Essay_; will feel himself
wandering into solitudes with _Gray_; shake honest hands with _Sir Roger
de Coverley_; be ready to embrace _Parson Adams_, and to chuck _Pounce_
out of the window instead of the hat; will travel with _Marco Polo_ and
_Mungo Park_; stay at home with _Thomson_; retire with _Cowley_; be
industrious with _Hutton_; sympathizing with _Gay_ and _Mrs. Inchbald_;
laughing with (and at) _Buncle_; melancholy, and forlorn, and
self-restored with the shipwrecked mariner of _De Foe_."

Carlyle has wisely said that a collection of books is a real university.

The importance of books has been appreciated in many quarters where we
might least expect it. Among the hardy Norsemen runes were supposed to be
endowed with miraculous power. There is an Arabic proverb, that "a wise