r I was framing:

"Books, books! always books, grandfather! When will you understand that
after all it is the world we live in which interests us; the world of
which we are a part, and which we can never love too much? Look!" she
said, throwing open the casement wider and showing us the white light
sparkling between the black shadows of the moonlit garden, through which
ran a little shiver of the summer night-wind, "look! these are our books
in these days!--and these," she said, stepping lightly up to the two
lovers and laying a hand on each of their shoulders; "and the guest
there, with his over-sea knowledge and experience;--yes, and even you,
grandfather" (a smile ran over her face as she spoke), "with all your
grumbling and wishing yourself back again in the good old days,--in
which, as far as I can make out, a harmless and lazy old man like you
would either have pretty nearly starved, or have had to pay soldiers and
people to take the folk's victuals and clothes and houses away from them
by force. Yes, these are our books; and if we want more, can we not find
work to do in the beautiful buildings that we raise up all over the
country (and I know there was nothing like them in past times), wherein a
man can put forth whatever is in him, and make his hands set forth his
mind and his soul."

She paused a little, and I for my part could not help staring at her, and
thinking that if she were a book, the pictures in it were most lovely.
The colour mantled in her delicate sunburnt cheeks; her grey eyes, light
amidst the tan of her face, kindly looked on us all as she spoke. She
paused, and said again:

"As for your books, they were well enough for times when intelligent
people had but little else in which they could take pleasure, and when
they must needs supplement the sordid miseries of their own lives with
imaginations of the lives of other people. But I say flatly that in
spite of all their cleverness and vigour, and capacity for story-telling,
there is something loathsome about them. Some of them, indeed, do here
and there show some feeling for those whom the history-books call 'poor,'
and of the misery of whose lives we have some inkling; but presently they
give it up, and towards the end of the story we must be contented to see
the hero and heroine living happily in an island of bliss on other
people's troubles; and that after a long series of sham troubles (or
mostly sham) of their own making, illustrated