e general reader.
The short biographies of historic personages, of which within the past
few years many have been published, have been a great relief to the
large class of readers who want to know something, but not too much,
about them.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling
that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only
long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? Many readers remember
what old Rogers, the poet, said:

"When I hear a new book talked about or have it pressed upon me, I read
an old one."

Happy the man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite classic!
I know no reader more to be envied than that friend of mine who for many
years has given his days and nights to the loving study of Horace. After
a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that we admit
a new author into the inner circle of our intimates. The Parisian
omnibuses, as I remember them half a century ago,--they may still keep
to the same habit, for aught that I know,--used to put up the sign
"Complet" as soon as they were full. Our public conveyances are never
full until the natural atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the
square inch is doubled, in the close packing of the human sardines that
fill the all-accommodating vehicles. A new-comer, however well mannered
and well dressed, is not very welcome under these circumstances. In the
same way, our tables are full of books half-read and books we feel that
we must read. And here come in two thick volumes, with uncut leaves, in
small type, with many pages, and many lines to a page,--a book that must
be read and ought to be read at once. What a relief to hand it over to
the lovely keeper of your literary conscience, who will tell you all
that you will most care to know about it, and leave you free to plunge
into your beloved volume, in which you are ever finding new beauties,
and from which you rise refreshed, as if you had just come from the cool
waters of Hippocrene! The stream of modern literature represented by
the books and periodicals on the crowded counters is a turbulent and
clamorous torrent, dashing along among the rocks of criticism, over
the pebbles of the world's daily events; trying to make itself seen and
heard amidst the hoarse cries of the politicians and the rumbling wheels
of traffic. The classic is a still lakelet, a mountain tarn, fed by
springs that never fail, its surface never ruffled