rank or
occupation;--talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the
things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so
numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day
long,--kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience,
but to gain it!--in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our
bookcase shelves,--we make no account of that company,--perhaps never
listen to a word they would say, all day long!

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the
apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying
us to listen to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company,
probably of the ignoble who despise us, or who have nothing to teach
us, are grounded in this,--that we can see the faces of the living men,
and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to
become familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to see
their faces;--suppose you could be put behind a screen in the
statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad to
listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the
screen? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two
instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two
boards that bind a book, and listen all day long, not to the casual
talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of
men;--this station of audience, and honorable privy council, you
despise!

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk
of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that
you desire to hear them. Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people
will themselves tell you about passing matters, much better in their
writings than in their careless talk. But I admit that this motive
does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral
writings to slow and enduring writings,--books, properly so called.
For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour,
and the books of all time. Mark this distinction--it is not one of
quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and
the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. There are
good books for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the
hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds before I
go farther.

9. The good book of the hour, then,--