Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the acutest and most
interesting of the brilliant literary New-England circle of authors, has been lecturing in America ou " reading," and ends his lecture by remarking that we should do very ill with- out reading, since " life, for a man, is a sentence of capital punishment, with a respite of a few scores of years ; while for a woman, it is the same, with imprisonment during a large part of the period. of respite." We cannot say that that seems to us to put the attractions of reading in any stronger light. Supposing there were no capital punishment at the end of life, would either men or women read less P We should suppose quite the reverse. Feeling that the opportunities of life wore larger, they would covet less im- patiently the direct experience of life, and be more ready to pre- pare themselves for it gradually by reading. And es for the women, it is curious enough that, in spite of their much longer " imprisonment," they certainly read less than men,—value the direct experience more, and the indirect less,—in fact, care for nature more, and for art less.
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