JOACHIM ELMENDOKF. 15 



Paris National, with its two million bound volumes and 

 one hundred fifty thousand manuscripts. 



There is no doubt that a great plague of our day is the 

 plague of books. Like the frogs of Egypt, books force 

 themselves in distressing numbers into our houses, bed- 

 chambers, beds ; into the houses of onr servants, and 

 into the very kneading-tronghs, where, generally, they 

 are found in the worst yellow covers, badly begrimed. 

 The best parts of the earth would be cleaner, sweeter, 

 safer, if mountains of superfluous and worse, literature, 

 might illumine them with a bon-fire bigger than the 

 world ever saw. A book- critic wrote thus, "There are a 

 hundred books worth reading to every one that the or- 

 dinary reader has time or opportunity for perusing ; and 

 there are ten thousand that are absolutely or relatively 

 unworthy of perusal." The literary discussions of the 

 Institute can hardly fail to indicate many of the best 

 books, to those who shall hear them. 



The legitimate work of the members, according to the 

 declared purpose of the department, will carry them be- 

 low the mere literary traits and details of standard pro- 

 ductions, and past their historic connections even, to the 

 forces which formed them, and the leading influences, so- 

 cial, moral, religious, which are operative in and through 

 them. This philosophic mastery of their profounder 

 principles and character will impart a keener apprecia- 

 tion of their merits and defects, and develop a literary 

 taste and judgment, which shall be increasingly discrim- 

 inating and authoritative. It would not be easy, also, to 

 over-estimate the value of both the stimulating and re- 

 straining XDOwer exerted by the encomiums and protests 

 properly issuing from a body like this. The warning- 

 voices that have been raised not too soon, and are sound- 

 ing in crushing condemnation not too severe, against the 

 sentimental, sensual, sceptical literature of modern ?es- 

 theticism, will here be distinctly and fervently echoed. 



