gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day, not to grant audience, but to gain it, — kings and statesmen, linger patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our book-case shelves, we make no account of that company, perhaps, never listen to a word they would say, all day long!

5. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the passion with which we pursue the company, probably, of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar; but it is not so.

6. Suppose you never were to see their faces; suppose you would be just behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is only a little less folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest men;-this station of audience and honorable private counsel, you despise.

7. But perhaps you will say that it is because the liv ing people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you about passing matters, much better in their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings, books, properly so called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

8. The good book of the hour is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person with whom you cannot otherwise converse, printed for you. Very useful, often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant, often, as a sensible friend's present talk would be.

9. These bright accounts of travels, good-humored and witty discussions of questions, lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of a novel, firm fact-telling by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history, all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age. We ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves, if we make no good use of them; but we make the worst possible use, if we allow them to usurp the place of true books; for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print.

10. A book is, essentially, not a talked thing, but a written thing; and written, not with the view of mere communication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would; the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would; you write instead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it.

11. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it clearly and melodiously, if he can; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life, he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; this the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize.

12. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing;" it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a "Book."

13. Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men; by great leaders, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and life is short. You have heard as much before; yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that; what you lose to-day, you cannot gain to-morrow?

14. Will you go and gossip with your house-maid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with kings and queens; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the common crowd for entrée here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?

15. Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault. By your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take a high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead. John Ruskin.

I

LESSON 92.

THE CLOUD.

BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

2.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 't is my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers
Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under it fettered the thunder;
It struggles and howls by fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dreams, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, While he is dissolving in rains.

3.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack

When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest on my airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

4.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm river, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

5.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;