Some of the Histories that our age has produced are books in the truest
sense of the word. They illustrate great periods in our own annals, and
in the annals of other countries. They show what a divine discipline has
been at work to form men; they teach us that there is such a discipline
at work to form us into men. That is the test to which I have urged that
all books must at last be brought; if they do not bear it, their doom is
fixed. They may be light or heavy, the penny sheet or the vast folio;
they may speak of things seen or unseen; of Science or Art; of what has
been or what is to be; they may amuse us or weary us, flatter us or
scorn us; if they do not assist to make us better and more substantial
men, they are only providing fuel for a fire larger, and more utterly
destructive, than that which consumed the Library of the Ptolemies.--F.
D. MAURICE. _On Books._