a journalistic
foreigner visiting the University, lunching at the station
refreshment-room, hurrying to half-a-dozen of the best known colleges,
driving in a tram through the main thoroughfares, looking on at a
football match, interviewing a Town Councillor, and being presented to
the Vice-Chancellor--what would be the profit of such a record as he
could give us? What would he have seen of the quiet daily life, the
interests, the home-current of the place? The only books of travel
worth reading are those where a person has settled deliberately in an
unknown place, really lived the life of the people, and penetrated the
secret of the landscape and the buildings.

I wish very much that there was a really good literary paper, with an
editor of catholic tastes, and half-a-dozen stimulating specialists on
the staff, whose duty would be to read the books that came out, each in
his own line, write reviews of appreciation and not of contemptuous
fault-finding, let feeble books alone, and make it their business to
tell ordinary people what to read, not saving them the trouble of
reading the books that are worth reading, but sparing them the task of
glancing at a good many books that are not worth reading. Literary
papers, as a rule, either review a book with hopeless rapidity, or tend
to lag behind too much. It would be of the essence of such a paper as I
have described, that there should be no delay about telling one what to
look out for, and at the same time that the reviews should be
deliberate and careful.

But I think that as one grows older one may take out a licence, so to
speak, to read less. One may go back to the old restful books, where
one knows the characters well, hear the old remarks, survey the same
scenes. One may meditate more upon one's stores, stroll about more,
just looking at life, seeing the quiet things that are happening, and
beaming through one's spectacles. One ought to have amassed, as life
goes on and the shadows lengthen, a good deal of material for
reflection. And, after all, reading is not in itself a virtue; it is
only one way of passing the time; talking is another way, watching
things another. Bacon says that reading makes a full man; well, I
cannot help thinking that many people are full to the brim when they
reach the age of forty, and that much which they afterwards put into
the overcharged vase merely drips and slobbers uncomfortably down the
side and foot.

The thing to determine then