i. (Septuagint.)

It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel of one
previously given, that I should shortly state to you my general
intention in both. The questions specially proposed to you in the
first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one,
which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves,
namely, _Why_ to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever
advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education
and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have
apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to
teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and
well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the
ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in
the truest sense, _kingly_; conferring indeed the purest kingship that
can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by
visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or
tyrannous;--Spectral--that is to say, aspects and shows only of
royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "Likeness of a kingly
crown have on"; or else tyrannous--that is to say, substituting their
own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.

52. There is, then, I repeat--and as I want to leave this idea with
you, I begin with it, and shall end with it--only one pure kind of
kingship; an inevitable and external kind, crowned or not: the
kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer
thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, therefore, to
guide, or to raise them. Observe that word "State"; we have got into a
loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability
of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word
"statue"--"the immovable thing." A king's majesty or "state," then,
and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, depends on the
movelessness of both:--without tremor, without quiver of balance;
established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which
nothing can alter, nor overthrow.

53. Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so
far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and _therefore_
kingly, power--first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all
around us, I am now going to ask you to consider with me farther, what
special portion or ki