ire.

Before you begin upon another masterpiece, set out in a row the
masterpieces which you are proud of having read during the past year.
Take the first on the list, that book which you perused in all the
zeal of your New Year resolutions for systematic study. Examine the
compartments of your mind. Search for the ideas and emotions which you
have garnered from that book. Think, and recollect when last something
from that book recurred to your memory apropos of your own daily
commerce with humanity. Is it history--when did it throw a light for
you on modern politics? Is it science--when did it show you order in
apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an
inseparable four? Is it ethics--when did it influence your conduct in
a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? Is it a novel--when
did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? Is it
poetry--when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or
a fire to warm your cooling faith? If you can answer these questions
satisfactorily, your stocktaking as regards the fruit of your traffic
with that book may be reckoned satisfactory. If you cannot answer
them satisfactorily, then either you chose the book badly or your
impression that you _read_ it is a mistaken one.

When the result of this stocktaking forces you to the conclusion that
your riches are not so vast as you thought them to be, it is necessary
to look about for the causes of the misfortune. The causes may be
several. You may have been reading worthless books. This, however,
I should say at once, is extremely unlikely. Habitual and confirmed
readers, unless they happen to be reviewers, seldom read worthless
books. In the first place, they are so busy with books of proved value
that they have only a small margin of leisure left for very modern
works, and generally, before they can catch up with the age, Time or
the critic has definitely threshed for them the wheat from the
chaff. No! Mediocrity has not much chance of hood-winking the serious
student.

It is less improbable that the serious student has been choosing his
books badly. He may do this in two ways--absolutely and relatively.
Every reader of long standing has been through the singular experience
of suddenly _seeing_ a book with which his eyes have been familiar for
years. He reads a book with a reputation and thinks: "Yes, this is a
good book. This book gives me pleasure." And then after an interval,
perhap