refined idleness these questions recur, bringing with them the sense of
bewilderment; and a still, small voice within us is for ever crying out
for some guide across the Slough of Despond of an illimitable and
ever-swelling literature. How many a man stands beside it, as uncertain
of his pathway as the Pilgrim, when he who dreamed the immortal dream
heard him "break out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?"

And this, which comes home to all of us at times, presses hardest upon
those who have lost the opportunity of systematic education, who have to
educate themselves, or who seek to guide the education of their young
people. Systematic reading is but little in favour even amongst studious
men; in a true sense it is hardly possible for women. A comprehensive
course of home study, and a guide to books, fit for the highest
education of women, is yet a blank page remaining to be filled.
Generations of men of culture have laboured to organise a system of
reading and materials appropriate for the methodical education of men in
academic lines. Teaching equal in mental calibre to any that is open to
men in universities, yet modified for the needs of those who must study
at home, remains in the dim pages of that melancholy volume entitled
_Libri valde desiderati._[24]

I do not aspire to fill one of those blank pages; but I long to speak a
word or two, as the Pilgrim did to Neighbour Pliable, upon the glories
that await those who will pass through the narrow wicket-gate. On this,
if one can find anything useful to say, it may be chiefly from the
memory of the waste labour and pitiful stumbling in the dark which fill
up so much of the travail that one is fain to call one's own education.
We who have wandered in the wastes so long, and lost so much of our
lives in our wandering, may at least offer warnings to younger
wayfarers, as men who in thorny paths have borne the heat and burden of