ore grown people know than you, you
ought to be anxious to learn all you can from those who teach you; and
as there are so many wise and good things written in Books, you ought
to try to read early and carefully; that you may learn something of what
God has made you able to know. There are Libraries containing very many
thousands of Volumes; and all that is written in these is,--accounts of
some part or other of the World which God has made, or of the Thoughts
which he has enabled men to have in their minds. Some Books are
descriptions of the earth itself, with its rocks and ground and water,
and of the air and clouds, and the stars and moon and sun, which shine
so beautifully in the sky. Some tell you about the things that grow upon
the ground; the many millions of plants, from little mosses and threads
of grass up to great trees and forests. Some also contain accounts of
living things: flies, worms, fishes, birds and four-legged beasts. And
some, which are the most, are about men and their thoughts and doings.
These are the most important of all; for men are the best and most
wonderful creatures of God in the world; being the only ones able to
know him and love him, and to try of their own accord to do his will.

"These Books about men are also the most important to us, because we
ourselves are human beings, and may learn from such Books what we ought
to think and to do and to try to be. Some of them describe what sort of
people have lived in old times and in other countries. By reading them,
we know what is the difference between ourselves in England now, and the
famous nations which lived in former days. Such were the Egyptians who
built the Pyramids, which are the greatest heaps of stone upon the face
of the earth: and the Babylonians, who had a city with huge walls, built
of bricks, having writing on them that no one in our time has been able
to make out. There were also the Jews, who were the only ancient people
that knew how wonderful and how good God is: and the Greeks, who were
the wisest of all in thinking about men's lives and hearts, and who knew
best how to make fine statues and buildings, and to write wise books. By
Books also we may learn what sort of people the old Romans were, whose
chief city was Rome, where I am now; and how brave and skilful they were
in war; and how well they could govern and teach many nations which they
had conquered. It is from Books, too, that you must learn what kind of
men wer