es, and beg your
leave to show _what use_, in my judgment, will be made of it. It will be
resorted to for _amusement_. Some will flit through it in the spirit of
the Viennese, who turn their central cathedral into a thoroughfare on
promenades and business walks. But such visitors will learn something in
glancing at the backs of books. Books, as well as men, have a
physiognomy. Here, as elsewhere, the admirers of Shakespeare will take
out his plays, return them with the leaves uncut, and then insist that
booksellers be instructed if Mr. Shakespeare writes any new book, to
forward it without further orders. Many will have no eyes except for the
volumes of _fiction_, and sometimes will rather run through these than
read them. Novels are a sort of cake, which, if eaten alone, is prone to
make mental dyspeptics. Yet most novel-readers will gain some profit
from our library. Some of them will here acquire a facility in reading
which for lack of practice has hitherto been unknown to them. No one has
really learned to read, until he has read to learn. Their interest in
stories will beguile the toil of becoming _ready_ readers, and their
range of reading will naturally widen. But if it does not, they may
learn much. Every good fiction is _true_, if not to particular fact yet
to general principles, to natural scenery, to human nature, to the ways
of human life, manners, customs, the very age and body of the time. Even
Tom Moore declares that "his chief work of fiction is founded on a long
and labourious collection of facts." Again, when worn out by work, when
care-crazed, and nerves are unstrung, who has not found in fiction--the
balm of hurt minds--a recreation, a city of refuge, a restorative.

"Cups that cheer but not inebriate?"

In this way our free library will be a new pleasure, and the founder of
it deserves the reward offered by the Sicilian tyrant, for such an
invention. Work was never so monotonous as now; accordingly, play ought
to be more than ever amusing. The Kilkenny cats, who devoured each other
all but the tails, left one orphan kitten which began to eat up itself,
but catching sight of a mouse was diverted from suicide. There is among
us more than one disconsolate kitten now destroying himself, who will in
our free feast of fiction espy a mouse which will reconcile him to life,
and save him from himself. The rationale of this solace is indicated
after a forcible, though rather a homely fashion, in the Chine