civilization and refinement; and we may affirm of
literature, what Otway has said of woman, "We had been brutes without
you." It is thus that the acquisitions of the wise are handed down from
age to age, and that we are enabled to mount step after step on the
ladder of paradise, till we reach the skies.

But, inestimable as is the benefit we derive from books, there is
something more searching and soul-stirring in the impulse of oral
communication. We cannot shut our ears, as we shut our books; we cannot
escape from the appeal of the man who addresses us with earnest speech
and living conviction. It is thus, we are told, that, when Cicero
pleaded before Caesar for the life of Ligarius, the conqueror of the
world was troubled, and changed colour again and again, till at length
the scroll prepared for the condemnation of the patriot fell from his
hand. Sudden and irresistible conviction is chiefly the offspring of
living speech. We may arm ourselves against the arguments of an author;
but the strength of reasoning in him who addresses us, takes us at
unawares. It is in the reciprocation of answer and rejoinder that the
power of conversion specially lies. A book is an abstraction. It is but
imperfectly that we feel, that a real man addresses us in it, and that
what he delivers is the entire and deep-wrought sentiment of a being of
flesh and blood like ourselves, a being who claims our attention, and
is entitled to our deference. The living human voice, with a countenance
and manner corresponding, constrains us to weigh what is said, shoots
through us like a stroke of electricity, will not away from our memory,
and haunts our very dreams. It is by means of this peculiarity in the
nature of mind, that it has been often observed that there is from
time to time an Augustan age in the intellect of nations, that men of
superior powers shock with each other, and that light is struck from
the collision, which most probably no one of these men would have given
birth to, if they had not been thrown into mutual society and communion.
And even so, upon a narrower scale, he that would aspire to do the most
of which his faculties are susceptible, should seek the intercourse of
his fellows, that his powers may be strengthened, and he may be kept
free from that torpor and indolence of soul, which, without external
excitement, are ever apt to take possession of us.

The man, who lives in solitude, and seldom communicates with minds of
the