"The time has come," said the Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, to me lately, "when the average girl goes to College." That means that the opportunities of higher culture, which Canada has so promptly followed the lead of the Old Country in offering to her women, are frankly recognized as fitting the exceptional woman for exceptional work, in some cases, and in many more cases as fitting the average woman for what is not only the most ancient but also the most common and withal the most honorable vocation that a woman can have, the vocation of homemaker. I propose therefore to speak of the right use of books, as it concerns not the learned literary woman, but the woman who finds time for the duty and pleasure of reading among many other occupations.

      Right use of books means right motive, right matter and right method in our reading, which we will deal with in order.

      Think of the last book you read, and ask yourself quite honestly this question: "Why did I read it?" Will any of these answers be yours: "Because I was asked to read it. Because I was expected to read it. Because I wanted to keep up my reputation as well-informed and studious. Because I had heard the book talked of, and I wanted to be able to talk of it also. Because the book looked amusing, and I wished for some amusement." I do not say that reasons such as these ought not to account for reading in the sense of glancing through published matter as we glance through a newspaper. But ought they to account for any reading worth lecturing about?

      The true reason for reading in the true sense is well suggested in one of the happy mottoes graven in the windows of the Library given to McGill University by the late Mr. Peter Redpath. It consists of but two words, ψυχῆν ἰατρεῖον "healing of the soul," which we may take in the larger sense of keeping in health rather than the smaller sense of restoring to health. You dined and walked out yesterday, because you wished to keep your body healthy by means of nourishment and exercise. Now, the mind like the body has a twofold need of nourishment and exercise. Would you plead exemption from your dinners and walks of this week because you dined and walked regularly some years ago? How then can you shape this excuse: "I read regularly in my schooldays or in my first year of leisure when school and college days were at an end. Now I have many other things to do, and may forego the habit."

      I cannot say too strongly to those whose college days are not in the past tense: "Use to the uttermost your present opportunity for strenuous study. It will be over all too soon, and it will never occur again." And to those for whom "the trivial round, the common task" have once for all limited that opportunity, I would say: "Never resign yourself to the thought that for you intellectual pursuits, however delightful, are things of the past." Starvation is a slow process, with imperceptible stages. Up to a certain point, mind and body may be left without food. Nature in both cases wards off inevitable consequences by using up the results of past nutrition. For a time we continue to exist if we cannot be said to live; but it is for a time only. Nor can the frame that is constantly passive retain its vigor and agility. We do take to heart the fact that we dare not leave our bodies unnourished and unexercised. At the cost of thought and effort, let us take to heart the equally certain fact that we dare not leave our minds unnourished and unexercised either.

      You may reply: "My mind is already fully exercised with some regular work of teaching, writing or correspondence. Is not this enough?"

      Let a writer and a teacher answer the question. A well-known journalist tells us that although his daily employment is wholly intellectual, he makes a principle of devoting one morning hour always to some "solid" book not immediately connected with his writing. One of the greatest teachers who ever lived writes thus to a friend and pupil:— "I am satisfied that a neglected intellect is far oftener the cause of mischief to a man than a perverted or over-valued one! ...... I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the mind once becomes stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind; it is drinking out of a pond instead of a spring." — (Life and Letters of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Vol. II., p. 85.)

      To the busy teacher especially comes the temptation to live from hand-to-mouth intellectually; to teach what was learned long ago as it was learned then; or to take in merely what must be given out immediately. We need to remind ourselves continually that parts of a subject, even its elementary parts, cannot be taught successfully unless the teacher continues to study it as a whole apart from the daily demand of the class room.

      For those also whose ordinary duties are less intellectual, there is in a still higher degree need of some kind of mental exercise. Lack of this too often means degeneration of the bright, intelligent youth or girl into the dull, common-place, harassed man or woman.

      Lastly, our motto tells us that culture, however delightful, does not satisfy the deepest needs of our nature. It is the healing of the soul, but not of that highest self which we call the spirit. The best possible illustration of what it can and of what it cannot do for a man is to be found in the autobiography of that remarkable and highly cultured man, John Stuart Mill. Having learned more than we are any of us likely to learn, he yet failed to find a satisfactory answer to the question: Is life worth living?

      The homely analogy from bodily needs suggested above helps us to solve the problem of Right Matter in our reading also.

      A healthy appetite finds satisfaction in every kind of wholesome food, and almost every branch of study affords healthy exercise to the mind. But neither mind nor body can flourish on what is not nutritious.

      All the books in the world may be divided into four classes:
      (1) Those containing bad matter, badly written.
      (2) Those containing bad matter, well written.
      (3) Those containing good matter, badly written.
      (4) Those containing good matter, well written.

      The first of those four classes is quite without attraction for the educated reader, so I may pass it by with the remark that it is in the power of each of us to do something to keep it out of the hands of others, to whom it too often means that the ability to decipher a printed page is a curse rather than a blessing.

      Concerning the second class, let me quote the words of a delightful author, known to most of us, addressed to a large gathering at the Liverpool Conference of Women Workers in 1891. Mrs. Molesworth there said:— "Do not be in a hurry to read a book just because everybody is reading it; do not feel ashamed not to have seen the book of the season. It may sometimes prove a very blessed thing for you never to see it at all. Far better miss altogether the reading of the cleverest book that ever was written than soil your mind and memory in the very least; far better to be laughed at as prudish or behind the day, than risk any contact with the mental or moral pitch which is so very hard quite to rub off again ... To my sorrow I could name some recent English novels, written, I am assured, with the best motives, and supposed to be suited to young readers, which I should shrink from putting into the hands of such almost more than an honestly coarse mediæval romance."

      Ignorance and indifference as to the dangers arising from the third class of books are so common that I must dwell on them for a space. In times of old there was such a thing as "universal learning." Hippias in the days of Pericles, Scaliger in the days of the Renaissance, were veracious if not truthful when they declared that they knew all there was to know and had read all there was to read. Infinite as they are in reality, for those famous scholars the bounds of the knowable were strictly limited. The world is older now and knowledge is wider. When thirst for knowledge is first awakened in early youth, we vaguely hope to learn everything: we are "universally curious." But ere youth is left behind, we find out that we must be content to leave many books unread and many paths of knowledge unexplored. Let us then choose wisely what we will learn, for this at any rate is true.

Ach Gott! Die kunst ist lang, Und kurz ist unser Leben"

      Goethe puts these words into the lips of Wagner, who stands for a type of those who are content to accumulate any kind of knowledge without pausing to consider whether it is worth accumulating.

      In a wider sense we must each, like Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas," make our "choice of life." For lack of resolution to do so, many drift on, and find their best years slipping from them ere they have accomplished anything. Others choose amiss. Have you never known men and women capable of doing useful though perhaps humble work of other kinds who waste themselves over worthless MSS, writing, though they have no new truths to give to the world nor any old truths to teach in a new way or to a new audience? The MSS replenish the waste-paper baskets of second rate magazines, their writers join the doleful ranks of "the great unappreciated" with a quarrel against the world in general and against publishers and editors in particular. Even clever men sometimes know not how best to use their powers. Did not Frederick of Prussia, greatest soldier of his age, carry reams of bad verses in his pockets?

      If then as workers we must choose wisely among things worth doing, and as readers among books worth reading, have we not a cogent reason for avoiding both unprofitable pursuit and valueless books, since we choose both at the expense of leaving good work undone and worthy books unread?

      Again, inferior writing must lower our own standard of thought and expression. A distinguished author once described to me his vow as a young student to lead no book that was not literature for two years. At the end of that time he had learned once for all "to approve the things that differ," that is, "to prove the things that are excellent." St Paul's phrase, δοκιμάζειν τὰ διαφέροντα bears either interpretation.

      Here we touch upon a distinction not always recognized. The three classes of books hitherto discussed have nothing to do with literature. Such expressions as "inferior literature," "pernicious literature," are contradictions.

      Men write for money, and make it. Such writing is and may be praiseworthy but it does not produce common literature.

      Men write for fame and win it. Such writing is common, and need not be ignoble, but it may lack the true inspiration of literature.

      Men write to amuse. Such writing is very common. It may be harmless, but it has no place in literature. And scanning the pages of some trashy weekly to beguile the hours of a long railway journey has nothing to do with reading worthy of the name. Would that trash have so large a sale if people were not afraid to be left alone with their own thoughts?

      Men write to edify. Such writing, though more honourable than some we have noted, is not necessarily literature. A religious writer, whose works are beyond all question literature, once remarked to me that it is a pity that so many people imagine that the only qualification needed for writing a religious book is being religious. Rather let the grandest of themes claim the greatest powers we possess.

      What then is the true nature and the true motive of literature? Let me give you Milton's famous definition of the one, and an equally good definition of the other from the works of his contemporary Henry More, the "Cambridge Platonist":

      "Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." — (Areopagitica).

      More says he will be satisfied if "by thoughts rudely scattered in his verse he may lend men light till the dark night be gone."

To be Continued

      Turning then to our fourth class of books, that is to those containing good matter well written, which are rightly designated Literature, we have a wide choice in both the two great departments of human knowledge: Physical dealing with Nature and Historical dealing with Man. Toward one or other of these we each have a bias, and this bias should be followed. Because I am fond of history I am not to question what is for you the more fascinating study of Botany. Because you delight in Philology, I am not to insist that you lay it aside for my favourite pursuit of Chemistry.

      But whatever we choose, we must keep two things in mind. First that our own subject probably seems large to us, out of proportion to its real size. It is possible to push steadily along the road we are determined pursue without spending our lives in a cutting that shuts out from our view that there is any other road to take. How many regard with more contempt than sympathy both acquirements and opinions that are not theirs! How many make a point of reading only books that they know beforehand they will agree with! Hear Mr. Ruskin on this matter: "You must show your love to books first by a true desire to be taught by them and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects. Very ready we are to say of a book: "How good this is! That is exactly what I think." But the right feeling is: "How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see that it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." "But whether thus submissively or not, be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first." — (Sesame and Lilies.)

      Secondly, we must remember that study does not accomplish its purpose if it leads to knowledge only. What we need to "cull" is:

Knowledge that step by step might lead us on To wisdom." — Wordsworth.

      They are very different, for;

"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."— Cowper.

      And knowledge is "the second, not the first."

"For she is earthly of the mind, But wisdom heavenly of the soul." — Tennyson.

      Seeking wisdom above all, we shall escape the dangers of that intellectual avarice that merely amasses for the sake of amassing, until with us as with the Sordello of Robert Browning:

Eyes, bright with exploring once, grow dim And satiate with receiving"

      The literary banquet is spread for all in these days, since the best books are also the cheapest. It does indeed seem good to the Canadian government to levy a tax upon knowledge that means at least half as much again added to the price of a book, viz., a volume that could be bought in London for 4s. 6d. here costs $1.75. But even so, half of what many of us spend in superfluous luxuries in the course of a year might furnish us with as many good books as we could really study in the time.

      But do we value books as much as they were valued in olden times when they were costly and hard to procure? It would not surprise me to learn that they are valued more here than in the Old Country, just because they are less easily got. One remembers what the enthusiasm of the scholars of old was. How, for instance, the young Erasmus wrote from Paris: "I have given up my whole soul to Greek learning. As soon as I get any money I shall buy Greek books, and then I shall buy some clothes."

      For modern expression of the same passion for books, take Isaac Barrow's words: "He that loveth a good book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter"; or Mr. Ruskin's eloquent elaboration of the same thought in his "Sesame and Lilies"; or Mrs. Browning's glowing verse painting from her own experience the young Aurora Leigh's rapture over books; or Book V of Wordsworth's "Prelude," where one of the least "bookish" of authors shows that he too knows that good books are

"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."

      Classifying books according to the numbers annually produced, publishers place fiction at the head of the list, and religious books next. Ere we leave the right matter of reading, we may say a word on each.

      Novels fall into three classes, suggesting three corresponding courses of action: (1) Bad ones, — that is, novels that call evil good, and put darkness for light and bitter for sweet. These we must not read. (2) Indifferent ones, — that is, weak fiction in periodicals, and sentimental tales, that fill circulating libraries and make young people dream of a life that never was and never could be real, instead of doing their duty day by day in the life that is real. Concerning these books also our course is clear. We need not read them, for if we do, it is at the expense of leaving better books unread. (3) Good ones, meaning not merely "not immoral," but likely to make their readers fear God and love men better than they have hitherto done, because a lofty ideal of what they ought to be is set before them, and they are stirred up to realize it. Such novels are not numerous, but they exist. Take Kingsley's "Westward Ho" and "Two Years Ago," and Mrs. Rundle Charles' "Joan the Maid." We may gain much from such good novels, given two conditions: (a) That we do not read too many. While repetition strengthens our active energies, it weakens our emotional impressions. The more you read, the less you will enjoy. (b) That we do not read for mere amusement. What was seriously written maybe seriously read, and how seriously the best fiction is written we see in the biography of the author of "Westward Ho."

      Turning from fiction to theology, we cannot leave unnamed that body of religious literature which we all have, which is at once most ancient and yet ever new, awaking the delight of the child and the awed admiration of the giant in intellect. Its name of Bible is an acknowledgment that it is the Book; the man who knows it only is educated in the highest sense; the man who does not know it has missed the best thing that Literature has to offer us.

      There are two ways in which we may fail to reap from it the rich harvest that may be reaped. If, looking at it only on its human side, we read with the cold superiority of the critic who ignores man's spiritual needs and denies that such needs can find satisfaction, and forgets (if I may for the third time refer to "Sesame and Lilies") "that no syllable of that great Book was ever yet to be understood but through a deed," we miss again and again meanings that are obvious to many a simple soul who does not know what "criticism" is.

      If again, looking at it only on its divine side, we read it in that devout but wholly unnatural way that ignores altogether that it is History and Literature, we turn a divine banquet into a feast of scraps, and in the end miss even the spiritual edification that we might have gained.

      What is needed is a combination of thorough and intelligent study, with the enlightened heart of that French lady who, when asked why she believed in the divinity of the Bible, answered: "Because I have become acquainted with the Author."

      Lastly we turn to the consideration of Right Method in our reading. We may possess good books we may read them, and yet we may be little the better because we read amiss. It is an old saying that he who would bring the wealth of the Indies thence must take it thither. What we get from a book largely depends upon what we put into it. Unless we are in some sympathy with the author, we shall misunderstand, as did the mathematician who laid down "Paradise Lost" with the comment that he found in it a great deal of assertion and very little proof.

      Thomas Fuller tells a delicious story of a rich and unlearned owner of many books entering the bare room of a poor student with this greeting: "Salve doctor, sine libris!" When the visit was returned, the student glanced round the well filled shelves, and said quietly: "Salvete libri, sine doctore!"

      Take Bacon's Essay "Of Studies" for many wise and weighty words on methods in reading. "Non multased multum" is an excellent motto here. Those whose culture has been of the highest type have often been students of a few first rate books rather than readers of a great many, good bad and indifferent. One book mastered is worth far more than twenty skimmed. There is in the world more curiosity to know what is said on a subject than to know the truth about it, and satisfaction of the former curiosity leaves us little the wiser.

      Mr. Gladstone tells us that he has been mainly influenced by four authors: S. Augustine, Bishop Butler, Aristotle and Dante.

      Archdeacon Farrar would give young people five "best books" to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest: "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Thomas à Kempis," "Imitatio Christi," Dante, Shakespeare and Milton.

      Lowell names five indispensable authors: Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe (i.e., Faust) and Shakespeare.

      Short as these lists are, each includes books of widely different ages and races. The battle between ancient and modern books which Swift described is best made a drawn game by availing ourselves of both.

      Another reason for aiming at few rather than many is that a book worth reading is worth reading three times: 1st, that we may know it; 2nd, that we may understand it; 3rd, that we may store it up.

      Once again let us lay to heart this wise maxim: "A word unknown is a sentence misunderstood!" and let us not be ashamed of minute accuracy and of frequently turning to the dictionary, especially the etymological dictionary, in the study of our own language as well as of other languages.

      It is a real help, to young readers particularly, to keep a list of all books read. The record of our choice of books confronts us and shames us into making it a good one. Exact statements of title and author's name are also useful for future reference.

      Finally, whatever the views of our author are, and we have agreed to leave altogether unread those books whose tendency we know to be harmful, let us not read him for the first time in that critical attitude that is so delightful to the half learned.

"We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits — so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth, 'Tis then we get the right good from a book." — Aurora Leigh.

      Let us then determine that every power we possess shall be cultured to the uttermost, that it may be a helpful power to the world in which we live; let us apply to all our reading that twofold injunction of Our Lord: "Take heed what ye hear" and "Take heed how ye hear," and then Motive, Matter and Method alike Right, books may be a true aid in fulfilling the noblest end in life, becoming what God means us to be.

(THE END)