THE CHOICE OF BOOKS.


"All round the room my silent servants wait
My friends in every season, bright and dim,
Angels and Seraphim
Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low,
And spirits of the skies all come and go
Early and Late."

PROCTOR.


And yet too often they wait in vain. One reason for this is, I think, that
people are overwhelmed by the crowd of books offered to them.

In old days books were rare and dear. Now on the contrary, it may be said
with greater truth than ever that

"Words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."

Our ancestors had a difficulty in procuring them. Our difficulty now is
what to select. We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors
of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure--not only lest we
should even now fall into the error of the Greeks, and suppose that
language and definitions can be instruments of investigation as well as of
thought, but lest, as too often happens, we should waste time over trash.