and so are free lectures among the humbler classes.  Books have been multiplied—­and at cheaper prices—­to an enormous extent.  In my childhood, books adapted to the reach of children numbered not more than a score or two; now they are multiplied to a degree that is almost bewildering to the youthful mind.  Newspapers printed for them, such as the Youth’s Companion and the National Society’s Temperance Banner, were then utterly unknown.  The sacred writer of the ecclesiastics needs not to tell the people of this generation:  “That of making many books there is no end.”

It is not, however, a matter for congratulation that so large a portion of the volumes that are most read are works of fiction.  In most of our public libraries the novels called for are far in excess of all the other books.  Let any one scrutinize the advertising columns of literary journals, and he will see that the only startling figures are those which announce the enormous sale of popular works of fiction.  I am not uttering a tirade against any book simply because it is fictitious.  Our Divine Master spoke often in parables; Bunyan’s matchless allegories have guided multitudes of pilgrims towards the Celestial City.  Fiction in the clean hands of that king of romancers, Sir Walter Scott, threw new light on the history and scenes of the past.  Such characters as “Jennie Deans” and her godly father might have been taken from John Banyan’s portrait gallery; Lady Di Vernon is the ideal of young womanhood.  Fiction has often been a wholesome relief to a good man’s overworked and weary brain.  Many of the recent popular novels are wholesome in their tone and the historical type often instructive.  The chief objection to the best of them is that they excite a distaste in the minds of thousands for any other reading.  Exclusive reading of fiction is to any one’s mind just what highly spiced food and alcoholic stimulants are to the body.  The increasing rage for novel reading betokens both a famine in the intellect, and a serious peril to the mental and spiritual life.  The honest truth is that quite too large a number of fictitious works are subtle poison.  The plots of some of the most popular novels turn on the sexual relation and the violation in some form of the seventh commandment.  They kindle evil passions; they varnish and veneer vice; they deride connubial purity; they uncover what ought to be hid, and paint in attractive hues what never ought to be seen by any pure eye or named by any modest tongue.  Another objection to many of the most advertised works of fiction is that they deal with the sacred themes of religion in a very mischievous and misleading manner.  A few popular writers of fiction present evangelical religion in its winning features; they preach with the pen the same truths that they preach from the pulpit.  Two of the perils that threaten American youths are a licentious stage and a poisonous literature.  A highly intelligent lady, who has examined many of