r to value their charms. "We do not gather books to
read them, my Boeotian friend," says Mr. Joline; "the idea is a
childish delusion. 'In early life,' says Walter Bagehot, 'there is an
opinion that the obvious thing to do with a horse is to ride it; with
a cake, to eat it; with a sixpence to spend it.' A few boyish persons
carry this further, and think that the natural thing to do with a book
is to read it. The mere reading of a rare book is a puerility, an
idiosyncrasy of adolescence; it is the _ownership_ of the book which
is the matter of distinction. The collector of coins does not
accumulate his treasures for the purpose of ultimately spending them
in the marketplace. The lover of postage-stamps, small as his horizon
may be, does not hoard his colored bits of paper with the intent to
employ them in the mailing of letters. When some one complained to
Bedford that a book which he had bound did not shut properly, he
exclaimed, 'Why, bless me, sir, you've been _reading_ it!'"

Herrick says that "the truest owner of a library is he who has bought
each book for the love he bears to it; who is happy and content to
say, 'Here are my jewels, my choicest possessions!'" Seneca, the great
Roman philologer, wrote: "If you are fond of books, you will escape
the _ennui_ of life; you will neither sigh for evening, disgusted with
the occupations of the day, nor will you live dissatisfied with
yourself or unprofitable with others." "I am quite transported and
comforted in the midst of my books," says the younger Pliny, who was
an ardent book-fancier; "they give a zest to the happiest and assuage
the anguish of the bitterest moments of existence. Therefore, whether
distracted by the cares or losses of my family or my friends, I fly to
my library as the only refuge in distress: here I learn to bear
adversity with fortitude."

Southey thus immortalizes his speechless, yet beloved, library
companions:

My never failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

Balfour is no less eloquent in paying worthy tribute to his library:
"The world may be kind or hostile; it may seem to us to be hastening
on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium,
or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and
irremediable wrong; but whatever else it may be, so long as we have
good health and a library, it can never be dull."

"Bookes," said the immortal Milton, "demeane themselves as well as