- About Bookbinding -

We walk with Dante though the nether world, awed by the tremendous power with which he depicts for us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we mount heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor poems, finer even than the stately march of Paradise Lost, we hear celestial music, and breathe diviner air. With that sovereign artist, Shakespeare, full equally of delight and of majesty, we sweep the horizon of this complex human life, and become comprehensive scholars and citizens of the world. The masters of fiction enthrall us with their fascinating pages, one moment shaking us with uncontrollable laughter, and the next, dissolving us in tears. In the presence of all these emanations of genius, the wise reader may feed on nectar and ambrosia, and forget the petty cares and vexations of to-day. There are some books that charm us by their wit or their sweetness, others that surprise and captivate us by their strength: books that refresh us when weary: books that comfort us when afflicted: books that stimulate us by their robust health: books that exalt and refine our natures, as it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the sound of a trumpet: books that illumine the darkest hours, and fill all our day with delight. It is books that record the advance and the decline of nations, the experience of the world, the achievements and the possibilities of mankind. It is books that reveal 'to us ideas and images almost above ourselves, and go far to open for us the gates of the invisible. A river of thought, says Emerson, is continually flowing out of the invisible world into the mind of man: and we may add that books contain the most fruitful and permanent of the currents of that mighty river. I am not disposed to celebrate the praises of all books, nor to recommend to readers of any age a habit of indiscriminate reading: but for the books which are true helpers and teachers, the thoughts of the best poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, orators,-if their value is not real, then there are no realities in the world. Very true is it, nevertheless, that the many-sided man cannot be cultivated by books alone. One may learn by heart whole libraries, and yet be profoundly unacquainted with the face of nature, or the life of man. The pale student who gives himself wholly to books pays the penalty by losing that robust energy of character, that sympathy with his kind, that keen sense of the charms of earth and sky that are essential to complete development. The world's great men, says Oliver Wendell Holmes, have not commonly been great scholars, nor its scholars great men. To know what other men have said about things is not always the most important part of knowledge. There is nothing that can dispense us from the independent Use of our own faculties. Meditation and observation are more valuable than mere absorption; and knowledge itself is not wisdom. The true way to use books is to make them our servants-not our masters. Very helpful, cheering, and profitable will they become, when they fall naturally into our daily life and growth-when they tally with the moods of the mind. The habits and methods of readers are as various as those of authors. Thus, there are some readers who gobble a book, as Boswell tells us Dr. Johnson used to gobble his dinner-eagerly, and with a furious appetite, suggestive of dyspepsia, and the non-assimilation of food.

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