or more frequently for indelicacy.  I have so much felt the influence of these straggling papers, that I have many a time wished that I had talents to produce songs, poems, and little histories that might circulate among other good things in this way, supplanting partly the bad flowers and useless herbs, and to take place of weeds.  Indeed, some of the poems which I have published were composed, not without a hope that at some time or other they might answer this purpose.  The kind of library which you recommend would not, I think, for the reasons given above, be of much direct use in any of the agricultural districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland with which I am acquainted, though almost every person here can read; I mean of general use as to morals or behaviour.  It might, however, with individuals, do much in awakening enterprise, calling forth ingenuity, and fostering genius.  I have known several persons who would eagerly have sought, not after these books merely, but any books, and would have been most happy in having such a collection to repair to.  The knowledge thus acquired would also have spread, by being dealt about in conversation among their neighbours, at the door, and by the fire-side; so that it is not easy to foresee how far the good might extend; and harm I can see none which would not be greatly overbalanced by the advantage.  The situation of manufacturers is deplorably different.  The monotony of their employments renders some sort of stimulus, intellectual or bodily, absolutely necessary for them.  Their work is carried on in clusters,—­men from different parts of the world, and perpetually changing; so that every individual is constantly in the way of being brought into contact with new notions and feelings, and being unsettled in his own accordingly; a select library, therefore, in such situations may be of the same use as a public dial, keeping everybody’s clock in some kind of order.

Besides contrasting the manufacturer with the agriculturalist, it may be observed, that he has much more leisure; and in his over hours, not having other pleasant employment to turn to, he is more likely to find reading a relief.  What, then, are the books which should be put in his way?  Without being myself a clergyman, I have no hesitation in saying, chiefly religious ones; though I should not go so far as you seemed inclined to do, excluding others because they are not according to the letter or in the spirit of your profession.  I, with you, feel little disposed to admire several of those mentioned by Gilbert Burns, much less others which you name as having been recommended.  In Gilbert B.’s collection there may be too little religion, and I should fear that you, like all other clergymen, may confine yourself too exclusively to that concern which you justly deem the most important, but which by being exclusively considered can never be thoroughly understood.  I will allow, with you, that a religious faculty is the eye of the soul;