THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 75 



the best literature that gives both society and 

 civilization its finest impulses and largest suc- 

 cesses. Life would be poor and meagre in- 

 deed if bereft of it. 



Imagination is the great realizing faculty. 

 Until imagination awakes, nor art, nor litera- 

 ture, nor life can do its best work. The char- 

 acter of Hamlet, Othello, Imogen, Colonel 

 Newcome, Becky Sharp, Bishop Myriel, Doro- 

 thy Vernon are simply true to life. No sane 

 man supposes that Don Quixote ever did or 

 ever could exist. To the intellect the book is 

 little more than "a farrago of impossible ab- 

 surdities." But the imagination perceives that 

 it is true to the fundamental essentials of hu- 

 man nature, and that the book is a true and 

 worthy book. To the cultivated man, who has 

 the keenest sense of reality, and the imaginative 

 •faculty, is possible the exquisite enjoyment of 

 "Henry Esmond," "Les Miserables," "Scarlet 

 Letter," "Romola," "Jane Eyre," and hosts of 

 others. Fiction that has no imagination, has 

 no inspiration and is forceless and useless, and 

 very apt to be morbid. The reading of fiction 

 has come to have an important and well recog- 

 nized place in modern life. No one will deny 

 the value of imaginative literature in the de- 

 velopment of mind and the formation of 



