ld Mortality,' or 'The Voyage of the Beagle' without
asking himself who are these strange characters, and where are these
strange lands that seem so familiar to us?

He who stands on a hill and surveys a wide landscape, easily recognizes
the leading features of the country--the river and the homestead, the
church and the corn-field--they need no guide, they tell their own tale.
In like manner the great landmarks of the literature of the past are
well defined and unmistakable to him who has eyes to see and a mind to
comprehend. The traveller may choose his line, and as he goes his way he
will not fail to find guides who will give him the directions which
passing doubts and difficulties may render necessary. The world's great
books stand out as the old stone walls of some great feudal
fortress--prominent and indestructible. Their original uses have been
superseded by the world's advance; but time and change add greatly to
their interest. He, however, who finds himself entangled in the dense
jungle of books that are not 'masterpieces,' and are so plentiful in
modern literature, is in a sorry plight; his way lies through this
jungle, be it long or short, and he cannot escape it altogether. He has
heard of the quiet groves of the Academy, and of the heights of
Parnassus, but he is rarely able to catch a glimpse of them. He is
whirled along and loses his foothold in the eddying torrent of
periodical literature; or he is entangled in the briars of controversy,
and, torn and vexed, is apt to lose his way. Here then it is that he
particularly needs a guide, and here it is that Sir John Lubbock bids
good-bye to him, and leaves him to his own resources.

The student, thus perplexed, may be surprised to learn from Mr. Ruskin
that 'any bank clerk could write a history as good as Grote's,' and that
Gibbon only chronicled 'putrescence and corruption; 'he may be deeply
interested in the information that Professor Bryce prefers Pindar to
Hesiod, that the Lord Chief Justice knows nothing of Chinese or
Sanskrit, and that Miss Braddon has spent 'great part of a busy life
reading the "Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews."' But all this does not
help him in his bewildering journey among the 10,000 books which are
annually flooding the world of English speaking readers--a mass of which
we fear that the quality advances in inverse ratio to the quantity.

Sir John Lubbock's list, as it stands, suggests a gathering of
illustrious Generals and offi