re
is D'Artagnan--the elderly D'Artagnan of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." I
know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be very
sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot
learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the "Pilgrim's
Progress," a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.

But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and
silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them
up like water, and are bettered, yet know how. It is in books more
specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish
and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell
early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence
was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a
book not easily outlived; the "Essais" of Montaigne. That temperate and
general picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons
of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and
wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their "linen decencies"
and excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of
reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse
and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they
will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer
fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their
contemporaries.

The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New Testament,
and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would
startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of
imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like
a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those
truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly
refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps better to be
silent.

I come next to Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," a book of singular service, a
book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a
thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus shaken
my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all
the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for
those who have the gift of reading. I will be very fran