Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448
Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: William Chambers
Robert Chambers

Release Date: April 20, 2007 [EBook #21193]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 448. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

BOOK-WORSHIP.

A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produce
it. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it survive
to an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of the
imagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: they
press forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturer
genius; but in so doing they still belong to their own--they still
wear the garb which stamps them as appertaining to a particular epoch.
Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower and
chief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as a
link between the two generations of the past and the future; but of
that future--so much changed in habits, and feelings, and
knowledge--they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers,
form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting.

A single glance at our own great books will illustrate this--books
which are constantly reprinted, without which no library can be
tolerated--which are still, generation after generation, the objects
of the national worship, and are popularly supposed to afford a
universal and unfailing standard of excellence in the various
departments of literature. These books, although pored over as a task
and a study by the few, are rarely opened and never read by the many:
they are known the least by those who