obvious reasons. Now, however, in the first place, they receive an
excellent education in elementary schools, and in the second have more
easy access to the best books.

Ruskin has observed that he does not wonder at what men suffer, but he
often wonders at what they lose. We suffer much, no doubt, from the faults
of others, but we lose much more by our own ignorance.

"If," says Sir John Herschel, "I were to pray for a taste which should
stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of
happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its
ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would
be a taste for reading. I speak of it of course only as a worldly
advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating
from the higher office and surer and stronger panoply of religious
principles--but as a taste, and instrument, and a mode of pleasurable
gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and
you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into
his hands a most perverse selection of books."

It is one thing to own a library; it is quite another to use it wisely. I
have often been astonished how little care people devote to the selection
of what they read. Books, we know, are almost innumerable; our hours for
reading are, alas! very few. And yet many people read almost by hazard.
They will take any book they chance to find in a room at a friend's house;
they will buy a novel at a railway-stall if it has an attractive title;
indeed, I believe in some cases even the binding affects their choice. The
selection is, no doubt, far from easy. I have often wished some one would
recommend a list of a hundred good books. If we had such lists drawn up by
a few good guides they would be most useful. I have indeed sometimes heard