ongues of angels by eloquence, and whom he hence worships as Scotchmen
do Burns and as all the world does Shakespeare. Less and less do men
entertain angels unawares, more and more are they ashamed to know the
world's books only by name. Nobody now asks concerning Paradise Lost,
"What does it prove?"

Moreover, the Free Library will be patronized by the people in quest of
answers to multitudinous questions. Newspapers, whether in its
reading-room or out of it, will rouse in many directions a curiosity
they cannot satisfy, and so will urge to the library. There is a story
that an Englishman in a London library, after looking through an atlas,
said to a friend, "Help me find _Umbrage_ on the map! I read in my
gazette that the French have taken _Umbrage_. What a good-for-nothing
minister is ours--to leave _Umbrage_ so poorly defended that the French
could take it." That John Bull discovered in the library either
_umbrage_, or what was better for him--his own ignorance and the way to
remove it, "taking umbrage" against himself. His gazette probably
brought the same earnest inquirer to the library for _history_ as well
as for geography. A daily paper, which is the history of the world for
one day, leads backward, as a stream carries our thoughts to its
fountain. Whoever repairs to a library with one historical query will be
likely to repeat his visit, since newspapers, in the light of history,
will become more significant as the last chapter in a novel is more
interesting to those who have read the previous chapters, and so often
leads one back to them. Again, discussions are always arising, not
merely in formal debates, but as we sit in the house and walk by the
way. Some carry them on by assertions and counter-assertions--a strong
will and a strong won't--equally positive and ignorant, discussing and
sometimes leaving off the _dis_, till like Milton's devils they find no
end, in wandering mazes lost. Too often "It comes to pass that a
terrible oath, with a swaggering accent twanged off, gives an opinion
more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned it." Others
back up their opinions by _wagers_, in spite of a lurking feeling that

"Bets are the blockhead's argument,--
The only logic he can vent,
His minor and his major.--

'Tis to confess your head a worse
Investigator than your purse,
To reason with a wager."

But where standard books are at hand, investigation will often either
t