ott, Thackeray, Dickens, Fictor Hugo, you should ovel,-sure to be forgotre perennial. The taste lels such as have been the trashy book, or the

n the predominant part a question admitting of ilitarians may hold that cience, works crammed aged. Others will plead a universal range. It ractive reading to the losophical. But there de the field of science, ks capable of yielding re are few books that o readers of any age find those personal its of character, that life, which form the fact, the novel, in its by imagination, and el is successful only st truly the scenes, ife. A well written by Boswell, Walter s, by Forster, gives of the times they y environment, and on their contemporanklin, one of the we are taken into

THE CHOICE OF BOOKS.

the writer's confidence, sympathize with his early st gles, mistakes, and successes, and learn how he made. self, from a poor boy selling ballads on Boston streets, a leader among men, whom two worlds have delighte honor. Another most interesting book of biography is of the brothers William and Robert Chambers, the far publishers of Edinburgh, who did more to diffuse us knowledge, and to educate the people, by their mani cheap issues of improving and entertaining literature, was ever done by the British Useful Knowledge Societ self.

The French nation has, of all others, the greatest ge for personal memoirs, and the past two centuries brought far more vividly before us in these free-spoken often amusing chronicles, than in all the formal histo Among the most readable of these (comparatively few ing been translated into English) are the Memoirs of montel, Rousseau, Madame Rémusat, Amiel, and Mad De Staël. The recently published memoirs by Imber St. Amand, of court life in France in the times of M Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise, and other per while hastily written and not always accurate, are li and entertaining.

The English people fall far behind the French in graphic skill, and many of their memoirs are as heavy dull as the persons whom they commemorate. But t are bright exceptions, in the lives of literary men and men, and in some of those of noted public men in ch and state. Thus, there are few books more enjoyable Sydney Smith's Memoirs and Letters, or Greville's J nals covering the period including George IV to Vict or the Life and Letters of Macaulay, or Mrs. Gask Charlotte Brontë, or the memoirs of Harriet Martineat Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson. Among the brieferb

raphies worthy of special mention are the series Men of Letters, edited by John Morley, and w some of the best of contemporary British write embrace memoirs of Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, Sid ton, De Foe, Swift, Sterne, Fielding, Locke, Dryd Johnson, Gray, Addison, Goldsmith, Burke, Hu bon, Bunyan, Bentley, Sheridan, Burns, Cowper, Scott, Byron, Lamb, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wor De Quincey, Macaulay, Landor, Dickens, Thacker thorne, and Carlyle. These biographies, being qu pendious, and in the main very well written, afford readers a short-hand method of acquainting the with most of the notable writers of Britain, their characteristics, their relation to their contemporar the quality and influence of their works. America not as yet illustrated the field of biographic litera many notably skilful examples. We are especially ent in good autobiographies, so that Dr. Franklin's almost alone in singular merit in that class. Wel abundance of lives of notable generals, professiona and politicians, in which indiscriminate eulogy and sanship too often usurp the place of actual facts, & truth of history is distorted to glorify the merits subject of the biography. The great success of ( Grant's own Memoirs, too, has led publishers to many public men in military or civil life, into the personal memoirs, not as yet with distinguished succ

It were to be wished that more writers possessed c literary skill, who have borne a part in the wor drama involving men and events enacted in this c during the century now drawing to a close, had gi their sincere personal impressions in autobiographic Such narratives, in proportion as they are truthful, more trustworthy than history written long after the

McMaster's History of the People of the United covers the period from 1789 to 1824, and is bein tinued. James Schouler has written a History United States from 1789 to 1861, in five volumes, w F. Rhodes ably covers the years 1850 to the Civil Wa a much more copious narrative.

For the annals of England, the Short History o land by J. R. Green is a most excellent compend more elaborate works, the histories of Hume and Ma bring the story of the British Empire down to about For the more modern period, Lecky's History of E in the 18th century is excellent, and for the preser tury, McCarthy's History of Our Own Time, and Mis tineau's History of England, 1815-52, are well w works. French history is briefly treated in the Stu History of France, while Guizot's complete Histo eight volumes, gives a much fuller account, from t ginnings of France in the Roman period, to the year Carlyle's French Revolution is a splendid picture o wonderful epoch, and Sloane's History of Napoleon very full details of the later period.

For the history of Germany, Austria, Russia, F Spain, Italy, Holland, and other countries, the v works in the "Story of the Nations" series, are exc brief histories.

Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic and his Netherlands are highly important and well writte torical works.

The annals of the ancient world are elaborately an set forth in Grote's History of Greece, Merivale's and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Another class of books closely allied to biograph history, is the correspondence of public men, and m letters, with friends and contemporaries. These fa

the United States and is being cona History of the e volumes, while J. the Civil War with

rt History of Engent compend. For [ume and Macaulay own to about 1700. History of England or the present cenime, and Miss Mar, are well written ed in the Student's mplete History, in ount, from the be1848. 1, to the year did picture of that of Napoleon gives

a, Russia, France, tries, the various eries, are excellent

c and his United well written his

aborately and ably Merivale's Rome, man Empire. to biography and men, and men of . These familiar

letters frequently give us views of social, public, and fessional life which are of absorbing interest. Amon best letters of this class may be reckoned the corres ence of Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, the Gray and Cowper, Lord Macaulay, Lord Byron, and Cl Dickens. Written for the most part with unstudied and unreserve, they entertain the reader with constan riety of incident and character, while at the same they throw innumerable side-lights upon the society the history of the time.

Next, we may come to the master-pieces of the writers. You will often find that the best treatise of subject is the briefest, because the writer is put upon densation and pointed statement, by the very form limitations of the essay, or the review or magazine a Book-writers are apt to be diffuse and episodical, h so extensive a canvas to cover with their literary de Among the finest of the essayists are Montaigne, Bacon, Addison, Goldsmith, Macaulay, Sir James Ste Cardinal Newman, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, Was ton Irving, Emerson, Froude, Lowell, and Oliver We Holmes. You may spend many a delightful hour i perusal of any one of these authors.

We come now to poetry, which some people cor very unsubstantial pabulum, but which forms one o most precious and inspiring portions of the literatu the world. In all ages, the true poet has exercised a fluence upon men's minds that is unsurpassed by th any other class of writers. And the reason is not 1 seek. Poetry deals with the highest thoughts, in the expressive language. It gives utterance to all the ments and passions of humanity in rhythmic and har ous verse. The poet's lines are remembered long afte finest compositions of the writers of prose are forg