properties of streams and springs and of various lands;
from books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every kind
of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, and
survey at will the whole progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and Pluto.

But if we please to visit the heavenly inhabitants, Taurus, Caucasus,
and Olympus are at hand, from which we pass beyond the realms of Juno
and mark out the territories of the seven planets by lines and circles.
And finally we traverse the loftiest firmament of all, adorned with
signs, degrees, and figures in the utmost variety. There we inspect
the antarctic pole, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admire
the luminous Milky Way and the Zodiac, marvellously and delightfully
pictured with celestial animals. Thence by books we pass on to
separate substances, that the intellect may greet kindred
intelligences, and with the mind's eye may discern the First Cause of
all things and the Unmoved Mover of infinite virtue, and may immerse
itself in love without end. See how with the aid of books we attain
the reward of our beatitude, while we are yet sojourners below.

Why need we say more? Certes, just as we have learnt on the authority
of Seneca, leisure without letters is death and the sepulture of the
living, so contrariwise we conclude that occupation with letters or
books is the life of man.

Again, by means of books we communicate to friends as well as foes what
we cannot safely entrust to messengers; since the book is generally
allowed access to the chambers of princes, from which the voice of its
author would be rigidly excluded, as Tertullian observes at the
beginning of his Apologeticus. When shut up in prison and in bonds,
and utterly deprived of bodily liberty, we use books as ambassadors to
our friends, and entrust them with the conduct of our cause, and send
them where to go ourselves would incur the penalty of death. By the
aid of books we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to
the future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate by
committing them to writing.

The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the
all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had been so
mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings that he ceased
not from his reading by reason of his journey, had banished all thought
of the populous palace of Queen Candace, and had forgotten even the
treasures of whi