of philosophers,
and to walk with Socrates, Plato and the stoics through the groves of
Academia; to be kindled by the saintly utterances of prophets and
apostles, St. Paul's high reasoning of immortality, or the seraphic
visions of St. John; to study the laws that govern communities with the
great publicists, or the economy of nations with Adam Smith and Stuart
Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the
origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave
the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the
universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the
mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and
assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:--to
come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of
Dickens, the philosophic page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter
Scott, the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life-pictures of
George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo, and the masterly
delineations of Thackeray; to hang over the absorbing biographies of Dr.
Franklin, Walter Scott and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the
masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt, De
Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel the inspiration of the
great poets of all ages, from Homer down to Tennyson; to read
Shakespeare--a book that is in itself almost a university:--is not all
this satisfaction enough for human appetite, however craving, solace
enough for trouble, however bitter, occupation enough for life, however
long?

There are pleasures that perish in the using; but the pleasure which the
art of reading carries with it is perennial. He who can feast on the
intellectual spoils of centuries need fear neither poverty nor hunger. In
the society of those immortals who still rule our spirits from their
urns, we become assured that though heaven and earth may pass away, no
true thought shall ever pass away.

The great orator, on whose lips once hung multitudes, dies and is
forgotten; the great actor passes swiftly off the stage, and is seen no
more; the great singer, whose voice charmed listening crowds by its
melody, is hushed in the grave; the great preacher survives but a single
generation in the memory of men; all we who now live and act must be, in
a little while, with yesterday's seven thousand years:--but the book of
the great