emselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of
people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how
much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United
Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents
of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature
take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of
food for the mind, as of food for the body; now a good book contains
such food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and for the best
part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before
they would give the price of a large turbot for it! though there have
been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs, to buy
a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than
most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more
the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us
if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were
half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what
bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there
was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the
very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if
a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything
which is not worth _much_; nor is it serviceable, until it has been
read, and reread, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you
can refer to the passages you want in it as a soldier can seize the
weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs
from her store. Bread of flour is good: but there is bread, sweet as
honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor
indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multipliable
barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich
nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's
books out of circulating libraries!

33. II.--I say we have despised science. "What!" you exclaim, "are we
not foremost in all discovery,[9] and is not the whole world giddy by
reason, or unreason, of our inventions?" Yes; but do you suppose that
is national work? That work is all done _in spite of_ the nation; by
private people's zeal and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to make
our profit of science; we snap up anything in the way of a s