I have spoken of literature as only one of the powers from which the mind of man is to receive culture and discipline, for although the common danger lies in another direction, it may encroach upon other powers to our grievous spiritual injury. It may win us too much away from the discipline of actual life into an intellectual luxuriousness: it may withdraw us too much from all of earth and sky that for wise purposes is sensible to us, and we may thus lose that contemplative spirit, which can "find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." We must not be unmindful how exquisitely the individual man and the external world are fitted. to each other, so that it is scarce a poetic exaggeration, that

My present purpose is to consider this one agency-literature-as a means of culture of character, manly and womanly; but, at the same time, let it be borne in mind that nothing conduces more to the wellbeing and strength of the soul than to keep it open to all the healthful influences which are provided for it, and to hold them all in true adjustment. There is a time for the eye to dwell on the printed page, but there is also a time to gaze " on earth, air, ocean, and the starry sky;" there is a time to look into the faces of our fellow-beings, the bright and laughing face, or the sad and sorrowing one; there is a time too for silent, solitary, spiritual looking inward into the soul itself; and thus by no one function, but by many, does man build up his moral being. Such is education, in its large and true significancy. Looking to literature as our present subject, and having ascertained that its prime quality is its power of addressing itself to man as man, let us now see for what purpose it so deals with our common humanity, so that we may have a principle to guide us in our choice of books. One of the most acute and logical minds of our time, that of him who has coupled his name with a morbid and ill-omened title-I refer to Mr. De Quincey, the English opium-eater-has drawn a distinction between two species o literature. "There is," he says, "first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach, the function of the second is to move...... The very highest work that has ever existed in the literature of knowledge is but a provisional work; a book upon trial and sufferance. Let its teaching be even par. tially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but

placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest work in the literature of power, surviving at all, survives as finished and unalterable among men. For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a book militant on earth from the first. In all stages of its progress it would have to fight for its existence: first, as regards absolute truth; secondly, when that combat is over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And as soon as a La Place or anybody else builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness; by weapons even from this book he superannuates and destroys it, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of Æschylus, the Othello or King Lear, the Hamlet or Macbeth, and the Paradise Lost are no militant, but triumphant power as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. All the literature of knowledge builds only ground-nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by the plough; but the literature of power builds nests in aerial altitudes, of temples sacred from violation, or of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative of the power-literature. The knowledgeliterature, like the fashion of this world, passeth away. But all literature, properly so called, . . for the very same reason that it is so much more durable than the literature of knowledge is more intense and electrically searching in its impressions. The directions in which the tragedy of this planet has trained our human feelings to play, and the combinations into which the power of this planet has thrown our human passions of love and hatred, of admiration and contempt, exercises a power bad or good over human life that cannot be contemplated when seen stretching through many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe. And of this let every one be assured, that he owes to the impassioned books which he has read many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood."

The distinction thus drawn between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power is, however, of uncertain application to many books in which, while the chief object is to impart information of some kind, power is given also; but this is certain that in all literature of high order a nation's purest literature, it is power that is given, and not knowledge. But what, it may be asked, is this Power which litera

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ure creates in the spirits of men? what is this soul-engendered energy? The knowledge-literature is measurable, and we can judge of the utility of this or that branch of it, its aptness to this or that man, this or that woman: but the power-literature is immeasurable, because it partakes of the infinite, and passing through and beyond the mere intellect, it dwells in the deep places of the soul. The common products of education are tangible and temporal, but there is a higher education that lifts you into the region of things eternal, "Truths that wake to perish never." There is an education which deals with acquirements, accomplishments, learning it may be, and, in all this, there may be vast variety and a huge profit, but there will be a transitoriness and withal weariness and vexation of spirit in it. There is a higher education, which is akin to religion, for it is a ministry of the soul, and deals not so much with what we know as with what we are, what we can do and what we can suffer, and what we may become here and hereafter. Thus it is that there are books of knowledge, and of power-books that make us more knowing, and books that make us wiser, and, in that wisdom, better.

This great distinctive principle gives good guidance to us, and it may be made most practical if a little thoughtful discrimination be bestowed in our intercourse with books; instead of apathy on the one hand, or on the other the voracious appetite that takes no heed of the various uses of books. A book may be read merely to talk about, and that is perhaps the meanest thing to read it for: it may be read for amusement, and that may be seasonable and salutary; but it also may be read for happiness, rather than for mere pleasure, for a perpetual rather than a passing joy: it may give health of mind, vigour, and vision: the heart may beat all the truer for it; the mind's eye may see all the clearer for it. As you close a book, ask yourself what it has done for you; and better, perhaps, than criticism or any other counsel, shall the silent communings of your heart tell you whether the oracle was a good or an evil one.

I have thus sought to show how, amid the hundreds of thousands of books which are accumulating in the world, we may select as literature those which are characterized by the universality of being addressed to man as man; and how, in the next place, we may contract it to a more essential literature, in the books which strengthen rather than store the mind-giving it power rather than apparel; and then, how we may raise it to a purer and higher literature, in the books which, by calling forth the good elements in our being and by chastening the evil ones, give spiritual health, and innocence, and moral power. Let these

principles be taken to heart, and let there be some thoughtful and genial intercourse with books, and there comes by degrees what seems almost an instinct to guide us in our companionship with them-leading to the good and truthful, and turning us away from the foolish, the false, and the pernicious. Even moderate experience, let it only be docile, thoughtful, and affectionate, will win for you an almost intuitive sense in judging what books you may take to your heart as friends, and friends for life it will give also that confidence, most valuable in the days of multitudinous publications, the confidence in determining what books, and they are very many, it is good to be immutably ignorant of.

Reflecting on what a book can do and ought to do for you-how it may act on your mind, and your mind react on it—and thus holding communion, you can travel through a wilderness of volumes onward, onward through time, wisely and happily, and with perfect vision of your way, as the woodman sees a path in the forest- -a path to his home, while the wanderer, whether standing or staggering, is lost in blind and blank bewilderment.

I

Literature, according to this conception of it, is to be employed for culture of character-manly character and womanly character. speak of them separately, not because it is necessary so to do with reference to that which is essential literature, but because attention has lately been drawn to the subject of the social position of woman, and there is heard at least a sound of conflicting opinions and opposing theories. It is a discussion into which I mean not to enter, but only to touch upon in its connection with my present subject. Let me say, in the first place, that I question whether it be proper, or even practicable, so to detach womanhood from our common human nature as to make it a topic of distinct disquisition; it seems to me a little too much like a naturalist's study of some subject in zoology—the form and habits of some other species of created things. Again, as to all controversies respecting the equality of the sexes, or relative superiority or inferiority, I have only to say, that to me they are simply odious,—wrong, I believe, -in faith, in philosophy, and in feeling. Why should our minds be perplexed with modern speculations on this subject, when we have inspired teaching, which, in a few words, if we will but look at them, will show us the whole truth: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make her an helpmate for him." "God doth not say," observes Donne, an old English divine, "it is not good for man to be alone," "he doth not say it is not good for this or that particular man to be alone; but is not good in the general, for the whole frame of the world, that man should be alone." Thus we find

the creation of woman, and that providential law which preserves the equal numbers of the sexes, resting on the divinely-instituted principle of companionship, not alone of marriage, not alone of mother and child, but the manifold companionship of woman, single or married, companionship involving, of necessity, reciprocal dependence, but having nothing to do with equality or superiority or inferiority on one side or the other. There is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity, or equality, or similarity, the law which reconciles similitude and dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on the other, for,

"Heart with heart and mind with mind,

When the main fibres are entwined,

Through Nature's skill,

May even by contraries be joined

More closely still."-Wordsworth.

There

Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were represented in our first parents, and so, however since disturbed, it remains as the ideal for all the generations of men and women. was adduced another law, when the words were pronounced to the woman. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" and thus dominion was mingled with companionship-dominion of one sex over the other, which no sophistry can evade, for it is divine and to endure with the earth and the race. Having its origin in evil, it grows with evil, and the woman sinks down into the slave, and the man into her mere imbruted tyrant; but goodness can still find the beauty of the primeval law of companionship undefaced by the element of dominion; for the penalty of dominion may, like the curse of labour, be converted into a blessing. As willing, dutiful labour brings gladness more than sorrow with it, so shall the fulfilment of the law of obedience win a glory of its own, brighter than any achievement of power. not by clamouring for rights, it is not by restless discontent, but it is by tranquil working out of the heaven-imposed law of obedience, that woman's weakness is transmuted into strength-a moral, spiritual power which man shall do homage to. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any earthly passion will but distort her being; she struggles all in vain against a divine appointment, and sinks into more woful servitude, and the primeval curse weighs a thousand fold upon her, and the primeval companionship perishes. But bowing beneath that law which sounded through the darkening Paradise, she wins for her dower the only freedom that is worthy of woman-the moral liberty which God bestows

It is