EVEN AS SOME MEN WILL TAKE NO MEDICINE UNLESS SOME PLEASANT THING BE PUT AMONGST THEIR POTIONS, THE PHYSI

CIAN SUFFERETH THEM TO HAVE IT.

So, BECAUSE MANY WILL NOT HEARKEN TO SERIOUS AND GRAVE DOCUMENTS, EXCEPT THEY BE MINGLED WITH SOME

FABLE, OR JEST, REASON WILLETH US TO DO THE LIKE.

FRIENDS FOR THE FIRESIDE.

DEEP indeed are our obligations to Books-for those treasures which we can unlock at will; treasures of far more value than gold or gems, for they oftentimes bestow that which gold cannot purchase-even forgetfulness of sorrow and pain. Happy are those who have a taste for reading, and leisure to indulge it. It is the most beguiling solace of life; it is its most ennobling pursuit. It is a magnificent thing to converse with the master-spirits of past ages, to behold them as they were; to mingle thought with thought and mind with mind; to let the imagination rove-based, however, on the authentic record of the past-through dim and distant ages; to behold the fathers, and prophets, and kings; to kneel at the feet of the mighty lawgiver; to bend at the shrine of the eternal poet; to imbibe inspiration from the eloquent, to gather instruction from

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the wise, and pleasure from the gifted; to behold as in a glass all the majesty and all the beauty of the mighty Past; to revel in all the accumulated treasures of Time; and this, all this we have, by reading, the privilege to do. Imagination indeed, the gift of Heaven, may soar elate, unchecked, though untutored, through Time to Eternity, and may people worlds at will; but the truthful bases, which can alone give permanence to her visions, the knowledge which ennobles and purifies, and elevates them, is acquired from books.

By reading, a man does as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with ages past.

The excellence of Aphorisms consists not so much in expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words. We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may easily be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.

What profits it to point out things already manifest? A great deal; for sometimes, though we know a thing, yet we regard it not. Admonition, perhaps, does not