under the influence of the great men of old:

"The dead but sceptred sovrans, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."

The imperial intellects of the world are as much alive now as they
were ages ago. Homer still lives; and though his personal history
is hidden in the mists of antiquity, his poems are as fresh to-day
as if they had been newly written. Plato still teaches his
transcendent philosophy; Horace, Virgil, and Dante still sing as
when they lived; Shakspeare is not dead: his body was buried in
1616, but his mind is as much alive in England now, and his
thought as far-reaching, as in the time of the Tudors.

The humblest and poorest may enter the society of these great
spirits without being thought intrusive. All who can read have
got the ENTREE. Would you laugh?--Cervantes or Rabelais will
laugh with you. Do you grieve?--there is Thomas a Kempis or
Jeremy Taylor to grieve with and console you. Always it is to
books, and the spirits of great men embalmed in them, that we
turn, for entertainment, for instruction and solace--in joy and
in sorrow, as in prosperity and in adversity.

Man himself is, of all things in the world, the most interesting
to man. Whatever relates to human life--its experiences, its
joys, its sufferings, and its achievements--has usually
attractions for him beyond all else. Each man is more or less
interested in all other men as his fellow-creatures--as members
of the great family of humankind; and the larger a man's culture,
the wider is the range of his sympathies in all that affects the