ed History of
Napoleon by Abbott. And I fear that you will find many a young lady of
to-day, who is content to be ignorant of Homer and Shakespeare, but who
is ravished by the charms of "Trilby" or the "Heavenly Twins." But taste
in literature, as in art, or in anything else, can be cultivated. Lay
down the rule, and adhere to it, to read none but the best books, and you
will soon lose all relish for the poor ones. You can educate readers into
good judges, in no long time, by feeding them on the masterpieces of
English prose and poetry. Surely, we all have cause to deprecate the
remorseless flood of fictitious literature in which better books are
drowned.

Be not dismayed at the vast multitude of books, nor fear that, with your
small leisure, you will never be able to master any appreciable share of
them. Few and far between are the great books of the world. The works
which it is necessary to know, may be comprised in a comparatively small
compass. The rest are to be preserved in the great literary
conservatories, some as records of the past, others as chronicles of the
times, and not a few as models to be avoided. The Congressional Library
at Washington is our great National conservatory of books. As the library
of the government--that is, of the whole people,--it is inclusive of all
the literature which the country produces, while all the other libraries
are and must be more or less exclusive. No National Library can ever be
too large. In order that the completeness of the collection shall not
fail, and to preserve the whole of our literature, it is put into the
Statute of Copyright, as a condition precedent of the exclusive right to
multiply copies of any book, that it shall be deposited in the Library of
Congress. Apprehension is sometimes expressed that our National Library
will become overloaded with trash, and so fail of its usefulness. 'Tis a
lost fear. There is no act of Congress requiring all the books to be
read. The public sense is continually winnowing and sifting the
literature of every period, and to books and their authors, every day is
the day of judgment. Nowhere in the world is the inexorable law of the
survival of the fittest more rigidly applied than in the world of books.
The works which are the most frequently re-printed in successive ages are
the ones which it is safe to stand by.

Books may be divided into three classes: 1st, acquaintances; 2d, friends;
and 3d, intimates.

It is well enough t