tHE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 73 



1 do not, however, by any means wish to condemn the entire use of 

 this style of reading, for, if I remember right, Gladstone calms his 

 nerves and quiets his brain by reading for half an hour nightly, be- 

 fore retiring, a portion of some new publication which a student or a 

 reviewer would be apt to class as trash. It is the change which 

 refreshes the mind. Literature exists to please, to lighten the burden 

 of men's lives, to make them for a short time forget their sorrows 

 and their sins, their disappointed hopes, their grim futures, and those 

 men of letters are the best loved who have best performed literature's 

 truest office. The truth or falsehood of a novel is immaterial, but to 

 soothe sorrow, to bring tears to the eyes or smiles to the cheeks of 

 humanity is no mean ministry. 



" Oh for a book and a shady nook, where I may read all at 



my ease of the new and the old, 

 For a jolly good book, whereon to look, is better to me than 



gold." 



Before leaving this subject — reading — I wish to impress upon 

 every reader, and especially the young and those with a prospect of 

 many years before them, the great utility of keeping a scrap book tor 

 clippings and extracts. Items that appear from day to day may 

 prove exceedingly valuable in the future, and the only time to secure 

 these is whilst they are before you. Anyone who has tried to locate 

 a paragraph or an article he thinks he saw at some indefinite time 

 can testify to the ditBculty there is in finding it again. There is not 

 a fact or a fugitive paragraph that you see in your paper, which will 

 not come up again at some future time. But, in keeping a scrap- 

 book never fail to index it, and to keep up the index, or its usefulness 

 is gone. Of course every one can be his own judge as to the subjects, 

 but a literary man will be astonished at the end of a year at what a 

 mass of information he has stored up for future use. State in it also 

 the source from which the scrap is obtained, as well as the date of 

 publication. Speaking from personal experience, when I was a boy 

 at school, I obtained at a London book stall, an odd volume of 

 Robert Southey's " Commonplace Book," as the reprint of his scrap 

 book was called, and its utility was so apparent to me after persual, 

 that I followed out his plans, and the benefits I have gained from 

 my scrap books at various times are incalculable. I have recently 



