When Mr. Balfour went on to praise the lore of
books as "a sovereign specific for dissipating the petty cares and troubles of life," was not he, too, a little conventional? " Petty " cares and troubles no doubt they may dissipate, but his context indicated that they could do more than this, which, except in the case of such cold hearts as that of the French writer quoted by Mr. Balfour, who said that he had never in his life undergone any personal trouble or affliction "which he could not dissipate by half-an-hour's reading," they certainly cannot. It is one of the greatest troubles of life for those who undergo great misfortunes to discover that though it is possible at any time to fix the attention on a subject which it is their duty to consider, the world of books has become as unreal and flat to them as if it were a world of shadows.
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