268 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



our last great wilderness, Alaska. From Shel- 

 don I turned to Stewart Edward White, and 

 then began to wander afar, with Herbert Ward's 

 "Voice from the Congo," and Mary Kingsley's 

 writings, and Hudson's "El Ombu," and Cun- 

 ningham Grahame's sketches of South America. 

 A re-reading of The Federalist led me to Burke, 

 to Trevelyan's history of Fox and of our own 

 Revolution, to Lecky; and finally by way of 

 Malthus and Adam Smith and Lord Acton and 

 Bagehot to my own contemporaries, to Ross 

 and George Alger. 



Even in pure literature, having nothing to do 

 with history, philosophy, sociology, or economy, 

 one book will often suggest another, so that one 

 finds one has unconsciously followed a regular 

 course of reading. Once I travelled steadily 

 from Montaigne through Addison, Swift, Steele, 

 Lamb, Irving, and Lowell to Crothers and 

 Kenneth Grahame — and if it be objected that 

 some of these could not have suggested the others 

 I can only answer that they did suggest them. 



I suppose that every one passes through 

 periods during which he reads no poetry; and 

 some people, of whom I am one, also pass 

 through periods during which they voraciously 

 devour poets of widely different kinds. Now 

 it will be Horace and Pope ; now Schiller, Scott, 



