own or said that if a man was by birth a
gentleman, and was worth L10,000 a-year, and bestowed his gifts up and
down among courtiers, he could be made a peer. Under Charles II. it
went on with still more rapidity, and has been going on with ever
increasing velocity until we see the perfect break-neck pace at which
they are now going. (A laugh.) And now a peerage is a paltry kind of
thing to what it was in these old times, I could go into a great many
more details about things of that sort, but I must turn to another
branch of the subject.

One remark more about your reading. I do not know whether it has been
sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds of books.
When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most departments of
books--in all books, if you take it in a wide sense--you will find
that there is a division of good books and bad books--there is a good
kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you
are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a
very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the
idea that people have that if they are reading any book--that if
an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than
nothing at all. I entirely call that in question. I even venture to
deny it. (Laughter and cheers.) It would be much safer and better
would he have no concern with books at all than with some of them. You
know these are my views. There are a number, an increasing number, of
books that are decidedly to him not useful. (Hear.) But he will learn
also that a certain number of books were written by a supreme, noble
kind of people--not a very great number--but a great number adhere
more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written
it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men's
souls--divided into sheep and goats. (Laughter and applause.) Some
of them are calculated to be of very great advantage in teaching--in
forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others are going down,
down, doing more and more, wilder and wilder mischief.

And for the rest, in regard to all your studies here, and whatever
you may learn, you are to remember that the object is not particular
knowledge--that you are going to get higher in technical perfections,
and all that sort of thing. There is a higher aim lies at the rear of
all that, especially among those who are intended for literary, for
speaking pursuits--t