d, and the motives with
which you strive to take high place in the society of the living,
measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the
place you desire to take in this company of the Dead."

This is the great world of BOOKS that is open to you; and how shall you
find your way in it, in these days, amongst the plethora of the second
and third and fourth rate, shouting out at you and besieging your
attention on every stall? It is no more possible to give you entire
guidance towards this than to give complete advice on any other problem
of life; your own nature must be your guide, choosing the good and
refusing the evil in the degree in which itself is good or evil. But one
may name some landmarks, set up some guide-posts, and the best of all
guidance surely is not that of a guide-post, but that of a guide, a
kindly hand of one who knows the way, to take your hand.

Do you ask for such a guide? A man of our own day, in full view of all
its questions from the loftiest to the least, and heart and soul engaged
in them, with deep and sympathetic wisdom born of his own companionship
with all the great thoughts of the ages? One surely need not hesitate a
moment in naming as the one for our special needs the writer we have
just quoted.

Scattered up and down the whole of his works is constant reference to
and commentary upon the great themes of all ages, the great creeds of
all peoples.

"Queen of the Air," "Aratra Pentelici," "Ariadne Florentina," "The
Mornings in Florence," "St. Mark's Rest," "The Oxford Inaugural
Lectures," "The Bible of Amiens," "Fors Clavigera."

With these as portals you can enter by easy steps into the whole
universe of great things: the divine myth and symbolism of the old pagan
world (as we call it) and of more recent Christendom; all the makers of
ancient Greece and Italy and of our own England; worship and kingship
and leadership, and the high thought and noble deed of all times. And
clustering in groups round these centres is the world of books. All
Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, Sacred History; Homer, Plato, Virgil, the
Bible, and the Breviary. The great doctors and saints, kings and heroes,
poets and painters, Gerome and Dominic and Francis; St. Louis and
Coeur-de-Lion; Dante, St. Jerome, Chaucer, and Froissart; Botticelli,
Giotto, Angelico; the "Golden Legend"; and many another ancient or
modern legend and story or passage from the history of some great and
splendid lif