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young pens before the pamphlet or political chapter which you read in a fugitive journal comes to your eye. All these are young ad\i'e11turers, who pro- duce their perform-ance to the wise ear of . Time, who sits and weighs, and, te11 years hence, out of a million of pages reprints one. Again it is judged, it is winnoxved by all the winds of opinion, and what terrific selection l1as 11ot passed on it before it can be reprinted after twenty years ; —and re- printed after a ceI1tury'I—it is as if Mines and Rhadaniailthus had indorsed the writing. ’T is therefore an economy’ of time to read old and famed books. Nothing can be preserved which is not good; and I know beforehand that Pindar, Blar- tial, Terence, Galen, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Eras- mus, More, will be SIIPBPiOI‘ to the average intellect. In contemporaries, it is not so easy to distinguish betwixt notoriety and fame.

Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said “ he and good travel-

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always went into stately shops ; t’ lers stop at the best hotels; for though they cost more, they do not cost much more, and there is the good company’ and the best infornration. In like manner the seholair knows that the farmed books contain, first and last, the best thoughts and facts.