16 JANUARY 1886, Page 3

Sir John Lubbock then gave his list of the hundred

books which seemed, on the whole, to be oftenest referred to by reading Englishmen as the most worthy to be read, excluding the books of living authors, and, with few exceptions, also excluding books on modern history, on which Sir John thought that there was very little consent. His list was as follows :—In morality and religion : The " Meditations " of Marcus Aurelius; the " Analects " of Confucius ; the "Ethics" of Aristotle ; the Koran ; Wake's edition of the "Apostolic Fathers ;" the "Confession" of St. Augustine ; the "Imitation of Christ ;" Pascal's "Pensees ;" Spinoza's " Tractatus Theologico-Poli- Cans ;" Butler's "Analogy ;" Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying;" Keble's "Christian Year ;" and Banyan's "Pil- grim's Progress." Among philosophic works, he mentions Aristotle's "Politics ;" Plato's " Republic " and "Phaedo ;" Bacon's "Novum Organon ;" Descartes on "Method ;" Locke's "Human Understanding ;" Mill's "Logic ;" Mill's "Political Economy ;" Lewes's "History of Philosophy ;" Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations ;" and Darwin's "Origin of Species." Of classical authors, he enumerates Aschylus's " Prometheus " and his trilogy on the murder of Agamemnon ; the " CEdipus " of Sophocles ; the " Medea " of Euripides; the "Knights "of Avis- tophanes ; Herodotus ; the " Anabasis " of Xenophon; Thucy- dides; Tacitus's "Germania;" 2Esop's "Fables;" Demosthenes's "De Coronit;" Plutarch's "Lives ;" Horace ; Cicero's "Do Officiis," and "De Amicitia," and "De Senectnte ;" Homer's "Iliad" and " Odyssey ;" Hesiod's "Works and Days ;" and Virgil. In the older poetry, he enumerates the " Nieblungen Lied ;" Sir T. Malory's " Morte d'Arthur ;" the " Mababhirata;" the " R.imiyana ;" the Persian " Shahnameh ;" and the Chinese " Sheking." Among modern poets, he gives us Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Spenser, Moliere, Goethe's "Faust," Scott, and Wordsworth (in Matthew Arnold's selection), Pope, Southey, and Longfellow. Of histories, he mentions Gibbon's "Decline and Fall ;" Hume's "History of England ;" Voltaire's "Charles XII. ;" and Grote's "History of Greece." Among voyages, he gives only" Cook's Voyages " and Darwin's "Naturalist in the 'Beagle.'" Among miscellaneous works, Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield ;" Swift's " Gulliver's Travels;" Defoe's" Robinson Crusoe ;" the "Arabian Nights ;" Boswell's "Life of Johnson ;" Barke's Select Works ; Addison's Essays ; flume's Essays ;

Montaigne's Essays ; Macaulay's Essays ; Sheridan's Plays ; Carlyle's "French Revolution" and "Past and Present ;" and Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister." Of novels, he mentions only Marivaux's "Vie de Marianne" (thought by Macaulay the best novel he had ever read), and selections from the novels of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Kingsley, and Bnlwer.