England now, and his thought as far-reaching, as in the time of the
Tudors.

The humblest and poorest may enter the society of these great spirits
without being thought intrusive. All who can read have got the ENTREE.
Would you laugh?--Cervantes or Rabelais will laugh with you. Do you
grieve?--there is Thomas a Kempis or Jeremy Taylor to grieve with
and console you. Always it is to books, and the spirits of great men
embalmed in them, that we turn, for entertainment, for instruction and
solace--in joy and in sorrow, as in prosperity and in adversity.

Man himself is, of all things in the world, the most interesting to
man. Whatever relates to human life--its experiences, its joys, its
sufferings, and its achievements--has usually attractions for him beyond
all else. Each man is more or less interested in all other men as his
fellow-creatures--as members of the great family of humankind; and the
larger a man's culture, the wider is the range of his sympathies in all
that affects the welfare of his race.

Men's interest in each other as individuals manifests itself in a
thousand ways--in the portraits which they paint, in the busts which
they carve, in the narratives which they relate of each other. "Man,"
says Emerson, "can paint, or make, or think, nothing but Man." Most of
all is this interest shown in the fascination which personal history
possesses for him. "Man s sociality of nature," says Carlyle, "evinces
itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundance of evidence, by
this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in
Biography."

Great, indeed, is the human interest felt in biography! What are all
the novels that find such multitudes of readers, but so many fictitious
biographies? What are the dramas that people crowd to see, but so much
acted biography? Strange that the highest genius should be employed on
the fictitious biography, and so much commonplace ability on the real!

Yet the authentic picture of any human being's life and experience ought
to possess an interest greatly beyond that which is fictitious, inasmuch
as it has the charm of reality. Every person may learn something from
the recorded life of another; and even comparatively trivial deeds and
sayings may be invested with interest, as being the outcome of the lives
of such beings as we ourselves are.

The records of the lives of good men are especially useful. They
influence our hearts, inspire us with hope, and