t and boulder clay. Sea beasts such as the
walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds
had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this
state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end.
The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk.
Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer
and the elephant; and at length what we call the history of England
dawned.

FREDERIC HARRISON

Born in 1831; educated at Oxford; one of the founders of the
Positivist School; Professor of Jurisprudence and
International Law at Lincoln's Inn Hall, 1877-89; alderman
of London in 1889-92; published "The Meaning of History" in
1862; "The Choice of Books" in 1886; "Oliver Cromwell" in
1889; "Victorian Literature" in 1895; a Life of Ruskin in
1902; a book on Washington in 1902.

THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE WORLD[61]

I say it most confidently, the first intellectual task of our age is
rightly to order and make serviceable the vast realm of printed
material which four centuries have swept across our path. To organize
our knowledge, to systematize our reading, to save, out of the
relentless cataract of ink, the immortal thoughts of the
greatest--this is a necessity unless the productive ingenuity of man
is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless chaos. To know
anything that turns up is, in the infinity of knowledge, to know
nothing. To read the first book we come across, in the wilderness of
books, is to learn nothing. To turn over the pages of ten thousand
volumes is to be practically indifferent to all that is good....

[Footnote 61: From an address on "The Choice of Books," read before
the London Institution in the winter of 1878-79, and afterward made
the basis of Mr. Harrison's book having the same title.]

I am very far from meaning that our whole time spent with books is to
be given to study. Far from it. I put the poetic and emotional side of
literature as the most needed for daily use. I take the books that
seek to rouse the imagination, to stir up feeling, touch the heart;
the books of art, of fancy, of ideals, such as reflect the delight and
aroma of life. And here how does the trivial, provided it is the new,
that which stares at us in the advertising columns of the day, crowd
out the immortal poetry and pathos of the human race, vitiating our
taste for those exquisite pi