nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether
on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend
on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call
him mad--a bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horsemaniac,
though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not
hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower
still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the
United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with
the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its
expenditure on literature take, as compared with its expenditure on
luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the
body: now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a
provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most
people would look at the best book before they would give the price
of a large turbot for it? Though there have been men who have
pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose
libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's
dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity;
for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it
has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half
so costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what
bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect
there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling:
whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people
forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book
is worth anything which is not worth MUCH; nor is it serviceable,
until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and
marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a
soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife
bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good;