A Book for All Readers | Page 3

Van
Buren, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Cass, Benton, Seward, Lincoln, Chase,
Stevens, and Sumner. While these Memoirs are of very unequal merit,
they are sufficiently instructive to be valuable to all students of our
national history.
Another very useful series is that of American Men of Letters, edited
by Charles Dudley Warner, in fifteen volumes, which already includes
Franklin, Bryant, Cooper, Irving, Noah Webster, Simms, Poe, Emerson,
Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Willis, Thoreau, Taylor, and Curtis.
In the department of history, the best books for learners are not always
the most famous. Any mere synopsis of universal history is necessarily
dry reading, but for a constant help in reference, guiding one to the best
original sources, under each country, and with very readable extracts
from the best writers treating on each period, the late work of J. N.
Larned, "History for Ready Reference," five volumes, will be found

invaluable. Brewer's Historic Note Book, in a single volume, answers
many historic queries in a single glance at the alphabet. For the History
of the United States, either John Fiske's or Eggleston's is an excellent
compend, while for the fullest treatment, Bancroft's covers the period
from the discovery of America up to the adoption of the constitution in
1789, in a style at once full, classical, and picturesque. For
continuations, McMaster's History of the People of the United States
covers the period from 1789 to 1824, and is being continued. James
Schouler has written a History of the United States from 1789 to 1861,
in five volumes, while J. F. Rhodes ably covers the years 1850 to the
Civil War with a much more copious narrative.
For the annals of England, the Short History of England by J. R. Green
is a most excellent compend. For more elaborate works, the histories of
Hume and Macaulay bring the story of the British Empire down to
about 1700. For the more modern period, Lecky's History of England in
the 18th century is excellent, and for the present century, McCarthy's
History of Our Own Time, and Miss Martineau's History of England,
1815-52, are well written works. French history is briefly treated in the
Student's History of France, while Guizot's complete History, in eight
volumes, gives a much fuller account, from the beginnings of France in
the Roman period, to the year 1848. Carlyle's French Revolution is a
splendid picture of that wonderful epoch, and Sloane's History of
Napoleon gives very full details of the later period.
For the history of Germany, Austria, Russia, France, Spain, Italy,
Holland, and other countries, the various works in the "Story of the
Nations" series, are excellent brief histories.
Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic and his United Netherlands are
highly important and well written historical works.
The annals of the ancient world are elaborately and ably set forth in
Grote's History of Greece, Merivale's Rome, and Gibbon's Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire.
Another class of books closely allied to biography and history, is the
correspondence of public men, and men of letters, with friends and

contemporaries. These familiar letters frequently give us views of
social, public, and professional life which are of absorbing interest.
Among the best letters of this class may be reckoned the
correspondence of Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, the poets
Gray and Cowper, Lord Macaulay, Lord Byron, and Charles Dickens.
Written for the most part with unstudied ease and unreserve, they
entertain the reader with constant variety of incident and character,
while at the same time they throw innumerable side-lights upon the
society and the history of the time.
Next, we may come to the master-pieces of the essay-writers. You will
often find that the best treatise on any subject is the briefest, because
the writer is put upon condensation and pointed statement, by the very
form and limitations of the essay, or the review or magazine article.
Book-writers are apt to be diffuse and episodical, having so extensive a
canvas to cover with their literary designs. Among the finest of the
essayists are Montaigne, Lord Bacon, Addison, Goldsmith, Macaulay,
Sir James Stephen, Cardinal Newman, De Quincey, Charles Lamb,
Washington Irving, Emerson, Froude, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes. You may spend many a delightful hour in the perusal of any
one of these authors.
We come now to poetry, which some people consider very
unsubstantial pabulum, but which forms one of the most precious and
inspiring portions of the literature of the world. In all ages, the true poet
has exercised an influence upon men's minds that is unsurpassed by
that of any other class of writers. And the reason is not far to seek.
Poetry deals with the highest thoughts, in the most expressive language.
It gives utterance to all the sentiments and passions of humanity in
rhythmic and harmonious verse. The poet's lines are remembered