a selection
that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over
the republic of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect
in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental
slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibbon's Decline and Fall,
luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant
the narrative, will become deleterious mental food if consumed straight
through without variety. It will be well to relieve it occasionally with
a little Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations, or Sturm's
Reflections for Every Day in the Year, or Don Juan, or Ward's History of
Stoke-upon-Trent.

Isaac D'Israeli says, "Mr Maurice, in his animated memoirs, has recently
acquainted us with a fact which may be deemed important in the life of a
literary man. He tells us, 'We have been just informed that Sir William
Jones _invariably_ read through every year the works of Cicero.'" What a
task! one would be curious to know whether he felt it less heavy in the
twelve duodecimos of Elzevir, or the nine quartos of the Geneva edition.
Did he take to it doggedly, as Dr Johnson says, and read straight
through according to the editor's arrangement, or did he pick out the
plums and take the dismal work afterwards? For the first year or two of
his task, he is not to be pitied perhaps about the Offices, or the
Dialogue on Friendship, or Scipio's Dream, or even the capital speeches
against Verres and Catiline; but those tiresome Letters, and the
Tusculan Questions, and the De Natura! It is a pity he did not live till
Angelo Mai found the De Republica. What disappointed every one else
might perhaps have commanded the admiration of the great Orientalist.

But here follows, on the same authority, a more wonderful performance
still. "The famous Bourdaloue reperused every year St Paul, St
Chrysostom, and Cicero."[37] The sacred author makes but a slight
addition to the bulk, but the works of St Chrysostom are entombed in
eleven folios. Bourdaloue died at the age of seventy-two; and if he
began his task at the age of twenty-two, he must have done it over fifty
times. It requires nerves of more than ordinary strength to contemplate
such a statement with equanimity. The tortures of the classic Hades, and
the disgusting inflictions courted by the anchorites of old, and the
Brahmins of later times, do not approach the horrors of such an act of
self-torture.

[Footnote 37: Curiosit