rom all my pleasure in reading, hearing, public and
private exercises of religion, and such like. I must leave my library,
and turn over those pleasant books no more. I must no more come among
the living, nor see the faces of my faithful friends, nor be seen of
man; houses, and cities, and fields, and countries, gardens, and walks,
will be as nothing to me. I shall no more hear of the affairs of the
world, of man, or wars, or other news; nor see what becomes of that
beloved interest of wisdom, piety, and peace, which I desire may
prosper."

It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which books
have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from the Bible
downwards. They contain the treasured knowledge of the human race. They
are the record of all labours, achievements, speculations, successes,
and failures, in science, philosophy, religion, and morals. They have
been the greatest motive powers in all times. "From the Gospel to
the Contrat Social," says De Bonald, "it is books that have made
revolutions." Indeed, a great book is often a greater thing than a great
battle. Even works of fiction have occasionally exercised immense power
on society. Thus Rabelais in France, and Cervantes in Spain, overturned
at the same time the dominion of monkery and chivalry, employing no
other weapons but ridicule, the natural contrast of human terror.
The people laughed, and felt reassured. So 'Telemachus' appeared, and
recalled men back to the harmonies of nature.

"Poets," says Hazlitt, "are a longer-lived race than heroes: they
breathe more of the air of immortality. They survive more entire in
their thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much
as if we had lived at the same time with them. We can hold their works
in our hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our lips.
Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as
to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men,
still breathing and moving in their writings; the others, the conquerors
of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy [19so to speak]
between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than that between
thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into
flame; the tribute of admiration to the MANES of departed heroism is
like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with
the progress of time harden into substances: