y for a nap, and who pretend to be
reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream between the leaves;
sensitive readers, who cannot abide the least noise or interruption when
reading, and to whose nerves a foot-fall or a conversation is an
exquisite torture; absorbed readers, who are so pre-occupied with their
pursuit that they forget all their surroundings--the time of day, the
presence or the voices of others, the hour for dinner, and even their own
existence; credulous readers, who believe everything they read because it
is printed in a book, and swallow without winking the most colossal
lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or
the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an
idiot or an ass--and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages;
admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite
author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in
the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of
literature; reverent readers, who treat a book as they would treat a
great and good man, considerately and politely, carefully brushing the
dust from a beloved volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book
fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt harm;
careless and rough readers, who will turn down books on their faces to
keep the place, tumble them over in heaps, cram them into shelves never
meant for them, scribble upon the margins, dogs-ear the leaves, or even
cut them with their fingers--all brutal and intolerable practices,
totally unworthy of any one pretending to civilization.

To those who have well learned the art of reading, what inexhaustible
delights does the world of books contain! With Milton, "to behold the
bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful
studies;" to journey through far countries with Marco Polo; to steer
across an unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of the
frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane; to study the manners of ancient
nations with Herodotus; to live over again the life of Greece and Rome
with Plutarch's heroes; to trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and
Mommsen; to pursue the story of the modern world in the pages of Hume,
Macaulay, Thiers and Sismondi, and our own Prescott, Motley, and
Bancroft; to enjoy afresh the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the polished
and splendid diction of Cicero; to drink in the wisdom