is a question admitting of widely differing opinions. Rigid
utilitarians may hold that only books of fact, of history and science,
works crammed full of knowledge, should be encouraged. Others will plead
in behalf of lighter reading, or for a universal range. It must be
admitted that the most attractive reading to the mass of people is not
scientific or philosophical. But there are many very attractive books
outside the field of science, and outside the realm of fiction, books
capable of yielding pleasure as well as instruction. There are few books
that render a more substantial benefit to readers of any age than good
biographies. In them we find those personal experiences and adventures,
those traits of character, that environment of social and domestic life,
which form the chief interest in works of fiction. In fact, the novel, in
its best estate, is only biography amplified by imagination, and
enlivened by dialogue. And the novel is successful only when it succeeds
in depicting the most truly the scenes, circumstances, and characters of
real life. A well written biography, like that of Dr. Johnson, by
Boswell, Walter Scott, by Lockhart, or Charles Dickens, by Forster, gives
the reader an insight into the history of the times they lived in, the
social, political, and literary environment, and the impress of their
famous writings upon their contemporaries. In the autobiography of Dr.
Franklin, one of the most charming narratives ever written, we are taken
into the writer's confidence, sympathize with his early struggles,
mistakes, and successes, and learn how he made himself, from a poor boy
selling ballads on Boston streets, into a leader among men, whom two
worlds have delighted to honor. Another most interesting book of
biography is that of the brothers William and Robert Chambers, the famous
publishers of Edinburgh, who did more to diffuse useful knowledge, and to
educate the people, by their manifold cheap issues of improving and
entertaining literature, than was ever done by the British Useful
Knowledge Society itself.

The French nation has, of all others, the greatest genius for personal
memoirs, and the past two centuries are brought far more vividly before
us in these free-spoken and often amusing chronicles, than in all the
formal histories. Among the most readable of these (comparatively few
having been translated into English) are the Memoirs of Marmontel,
Rousseau, Madame Remusat, Amiel, and Madame De Stae