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is plain and evident who ought to be the clites loversos books. For those who have most need of wisdomin order to persorm usesilly the duties of their position, they are without doubi mosi especialty bound to fhowmore abundantly to the sacred vesseis of wisdom the anxious affection os a grates 1l heart. Now it is the ossice of the wiseman to order rightly both himself and others, accor ling to the Phoebus of philosophers, Aristolle, who decetVes not noris deceived in human things. Wheres re princes and prelateS, judges and doctors, and ali other leaders of the common-
Boethius, indeed, beheld Philosophy bearing a sceptre inher test hand and books in her right, by whicli it is evidently
wealth without books. Thou, says Boethius, speal ing to Philosophy, hast sanctioned this saying by the molith of Plato, that states would be happy is they were ruted by students of philosophy, or is their rulers would study philosophy. And again, we are taught by the very gesture of the figurethat in so far as the right hand is beller than the lest, so far thecontemplative lisse is more worthy than the active lisse; and atthe Same time we are shown that the business of the wise manis to devote himself by turns, now to the study of truth, and now to the dispensation os temporal things. We read that Philip thanked the Gods devoutly sor havinggranted that Alexander should be born in the time of Aristolle,so that educated under his instruction he might be worthy to
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bury, in his Policraticon. In conclusion, ali classes of men whoare conspicUOUs by the tonsure or the sign os cierkship, against
chapters, are bound to serve books with perpetuat veneration.
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the stammering of Moses, or with Ieremiah wili consess that he is biit a boy and cannot speah, or will imitate Echo re-bounding from the mountains. For we know that the love of books is the fame thing as the love of wisdom, as WasproVed in the second chapter. Now this love is called by the Greeh word philosophy, the whole virtve of which no created intelligence can comprehend; sor sile is belleved to be themother of ali good things: Wisdom vii. She as a heavenlydew extinguishes the heats of fleshy vices, the intense activityof the mental forces relaxing the vigour of the animal forces,
ali the bows of Cupid are Un StrUng. Hence Plato says in the Phaedo: The philosopher is manifestin this, that he dissevers the foui from communion with thebody. LoVe, says Ierome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wili not love the vices of the flesti. The godlike Xenocrates stlowed this by the firmness of his reason, who was declared by the famous hetaera Phryne to be a statue and not aman, when ali her blandishments could not shake his resolve, as Valerius Maximus relates at tength. Our own Origenshowed this also, who chose rather to be unsexed by the mutilation of himself, than to be made effeminate by the omnipotence of woman-though it was a liasty remedy, repUgnantalike to nature and to virtve, whose place it is not to make
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men insensibie to passion, but to flay with the dagger of reason the passions that spring from instinct. Again, ait who are smitten with the love of books thinhchea ply of the worid and wealth; as Ierome says to Vigilantius: The fame man cannot love both gold and books. Andthus it has been said in Verse
NO man, theres ore, can serve both books and Mammon.
The hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, sothat he who loves to commune with books is led to detest allmanner of vice. The demon, who derives his name fromknowledge, is most emectualty des eated by the knowledge of books, and through books his multitudinous decetis and theendless labyrintlis of his guile are laid bare to those who read, test he be transformed into an anget os light and circumvent the innocent by his wiles. The reverence of God is revealedio us by books, the virtves by which He is worshipped aremore CXpressty manifested, and the rewards are described thatare promised by the truth, whicli deceives not, netther is deceived. The truest likeness of the beatitude to come is the contemplation of the sacred writings, in which we belloid in turn the Creator and the creature, and draw from streams of per
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In books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulsis of the abyss; in books we belloid the finny tribes that may notexist ouiside their native waters, distinguish the properties of Streanis and springs and of various laniis; from books we digoUt gems and metals and the materials of every kind of minerat, and learn the viriues of herbs and trees and planis, and furvey at will the whole progeny of Neptune, Ceres and Pluto. But is we please to visit the heavenly inhabitanis, Taurus, Caucasus, and Olympus are at hand, from which we pass be-yond the realms of Iuno and mark out the territories of theseven planeis by lines and circles. And finalty we traverse thelostiest firmament of ali, adorned with signs, degrees, and fig-
on to Separate substances, that the intellect may greet hindred
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as Tertullian observes at the beginning of his Apologeticus. When shut up in prison and in bonds, and ulterly deprived of bodily liberty, we use books as ambassadors to OUr friendS, and entrusi them with the conduci of our cause, and sendthem where to go OUrselves would incur the penalty of death. By the aid of books we remember things that are past, and CVen prophesy as to the future; and things present, which shistand flow, we perpetuate by committing them to writing. The selicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the all-powersul eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, whohad been so mightily kindled by the love of the propheticwritings that he cea sed not from his reading by reason of his j ourney, had banished ali thought of the populous palace of
Queen Candace, and had sorgoiten even the treasures of
which he was the keeper, and had neglected althe his j ourneyand the chariot in which he rode. Love of his book alone had wholly engrossed this domicile of chastity, Under whose guid-ance he soon deserved to enter the gate of saith. O gractous love of books, which by the grace of baptism transformed thechild of Gehenna and nursting of Tartarus into a Son of the
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JU T A IT IS NECEssARY sor the state to prepare arms and toprovide abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who areto figlit for it, so it is sitiing for the Church Militant tofortis' itself against the assauits of pagans and hereticswith a multitude of sound writings. But hecause ali the appliances of mortal men with the lapseos time suffer the decay of mortality, it is needsul to replacethe volumes that are worn out with age by fresti successors, that the perpetuity of whicli the individuat is by iis nature incapabie may be secured to the species; and lience it is that the Preacher says: of ma ing many θοο s there is no end. Foras the bodies of books, feeing that they are formed os a combination os contrary elemenis, undergo a continuat dissolution of their structure, so by the sorethought of the clergy a remedy should be sound, by means of whicli the sacred book paying the debl of nature may obtain a natural heir and mayraise up like seed to iis dead brother, and thus may be verisi edthat saying of Ecclesiasticus: His fallier is dead, and he is as is he were not dead; sor he hath lest one bellind him that is like himself. And thus the transcription os ancient books is as it were the begetling of fresti sons, on whom the ossice of the fallier may devolve, test it susser detriment. Now such transcribers are called antiquarii, whose occupations Cassiodorus consesses please him above ali the tasks of bodily labour, add-ing Happy emori, he says, 'laudabie industry, to preach tomen with the hand, to let loose longues with the fingers, silently to give salvation to mortals, and to sight with pen andink against the illicit wiles of the Evit One.'' So far Cassio
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God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living;
Moses received the tables of stone written with the finger of God. Iob destres that he himself that judgeth would write a book. Belshaggar trembled when he saw the fingers of a man's hand writing upon the wall, Mene te et phares. Ι wrote, says Ieremiali, with ink in the book. Christ bi is his beloved disciple Iolin, What thou seest write in a book. So the ossice of the writer is enjoined on Isaiah and on Ioshua, that the actand skill of writing may be commended to suture generationS.Christ Himself has written on His vesture and on His thighΚing of Lings and Lord of Lordy, so that without writing theroyal ornaments of the Omnipotent cannot be made persect. Being dead they cease not to leach, who write books of sacred
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Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the Church that the longevity of the ancients, besore God destroyed the originat world by the Deluge, is to be ascribedio a miracle and not to nature; as though God granted tothem such tength of days as was required sor finding out thesciences and writing them in books; amongst whicli the wondersul variety of astronomy required, according to Iosephus, a period of six hundred years, to submit it to ocular obserVation. Nor, indeed, do they deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age assorded a more nutritious aliment to menthat in Our modern times, and thus they had not only a livellerenergy of body, but also a more tengthened period os vigour; to whicli it contributed not a litile that they lived accordingio virtve and dented themselves ali luxurious deligitis. Who-
lengthened in this present worid. And surther, is we turn our discourse to the princes of the worid, we find that famous emperors not only attained eXcellent skill in the art of writing, but indulged greatly in iis practice. Iulius Caesar, the firsi and greatest of them ali, has testus Commentaries on the Gallic and the Civit Wars written by himself; he wrole also two books De Analogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter, and many other WorkS. Iulius and Augustus devised means of writing one letter soranother, and so concealing what they wrote. For Iulius putthe s urth letter sor the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst Augustus used the second sor the first, the third sor the Second, and so throughout. He is sald in the greatest dissicul-ties of asfairs during the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimed every day. Tiberius wrote a lyricpoem and some Greeli verses. Claudius likewise was skilled
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in both Greeh and Latin, and wrote severat books. But Titus was skilled above ali men in the art of writing, and eastly imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to say that is he had wished it he might have become a most shilsul sorger. Allthese things are noted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve