the best things we find in them. "In literature," said Lord Dudley, "I am fond of confining myself to the best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again than to read a new one for the first time."
Sometimes a book containing a noble exemplar of life, taken up at random, merely with the object of reading it as a pastime, has been known to call forth energies whose existence had not before been suspected. Alfieri was first drawn with passion to literature by reading 'Plutarch's Lives.' Loyola, when a soldier serving at the siege of Pampeluna, and laid up by a dangerous wound in his leg, asked for a book to divert his thoughts: the 'Lives of the Saints' was brought to him, and its perusal so inflamed his mind, that he determined thenceforth to devote himself to the founding of a religious order. Luther, in like manner, was inspired to undertake the great labours of his life by a perusal of the 'Life and Writings of John Huss.' Dr. Wolff was stimulated to enter upon his missionary career by reading the 'Life of Francis Xavier'; and the book fired his youthful bosom with a passion the most sincere and ardent to devote himself to the enterprise of his life. William Carey, also, got the first idea of entering upon his sublime labours as a missionary from a perusal of the Voyages of Captain Cook.
Francis Horner was accustomed to note in his diary and letters the books by which he was most improved and influenced. Amongst these were Condorcet's 'Eloge of Haller,' Sir Joshua Reynolds'
