we have a fine American literature, which should be read after
the history of the country is mastered, the stories of Cooper are
fresh and invigorating, and those of Hawthorne are life studies and
prose poems. Holmes, Lowell, Emerson, Bayard Taylor, and scores of
other American writers, whose pens have added lustre to the country,
will well repay the reader.

Good books are among the best of companions; and, by elevating the
thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low
associations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual
pursuits," says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral
ship-wreck so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of
their parental pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit,
the tavern, the saloon. The closet associate of Pope and
Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of
Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low company
and slaves."

It has been truly said that the best books are those which most
resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and
sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it
against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce high-minded
cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape,
and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in
which the ancient classics are studied are appropriately styled "The
Humanity Classes."

Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the
necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently
postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the
former. His greatest favorites were the writings of Cicero, which he
says he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never,"
he says, "read the works of Cicero on 'Old Age,' or 'Friendship,' or
his 'Tusculan Disputations,' without fervently pressing them to my
lips, without being penetrated with veneration for a mind little
short of inspired by God himself."

It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which
books have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from
the Bible downward. They contain the treasured knowledge of the
human race. They are the record of all labors, achievements,
speculations, successes, and failures, in science, philosophy,
religion, and morals. They have been the greatest motive-powers in
all times. "From the Gospel to the Contrat Social," says