is almost the only thing that is necessary for its
development. The boundless world breaks in upon him with creative force.
His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the
like in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every
little bird and every little flower are known to him. He contemplates
Falstaff and Poor Tom with as much interest as though they were Hamlet
and King Lear. In all original minds the power of observation is great.
It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of that which touches
us most nearly and most deeply colors the imagination. When the boy is
wandering through fields, sitting in the shade of trees, or lying on the
banks of murmuring streams, he is not only learning more delightful
things than books will ever teach him, but he is also acquiring the
habit of attention, of looking at what he sees, which nowhere else can
be gotten in so natural and pleasant a way. Hence the best minds have
either been born in the country or have passed there some of their early
years. Unless we have first learned to look with the eye, we shall never
learn to look with the mind. They who walk unmoved beneath the starlit
heavens, or by the ever-moving ocean, or amid the silent mountains; who
do not find, like Wordsworth, that the meanest flower that blows gives
thoughts which often lie too deep for tears, will not derive great help
from the world of books. But in the world of books the intellectual must
also make themselves at home and live, must thence draw nourishment,
light, wisdom, strength, for there as nowhere else the mind of man has
stamped its image; and there the thoughts of the master spirits still
breathe, still glow with truth and beauty. The best books are powers

"Forever to be hallowed; only less,
For what we are and what we may become,
Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
Or his pure Word, by miracle revealed."

But it is as difficult to know books as to know men. There are but few
men who can be of intellectual service to us; and there are but few
books which stimulate and nourish the mind. The best books are, as
Milton says, "the precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and it is
absurd to suppose that they will reveal their secret to every chance
comer, to every heedless reader. As it takes a hero to know a hero, so
only an awakened mind can love and understand the great thinkers. The
reading of the ignorant is chiefl