CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
CONTENTS
BOOK-WORSHIP.
OUR TERRACE.
SLAVES IN BRITAIN.
THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER'S TALE.
ADVENTURES IN JAPAN.
THINGS TALKED OF IN LONDON.
A QUALIFIED INSTRUCTOR.
AN AMERICAN RIVER.
CHOOSE THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET.
A DREAM OF DEATH.
THE EXECUTIONER IN ALGERIA.
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'SINFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
| No. 448. New Series. | SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1852. | Price 1½d. |
BOOK-WORSHIP.
A book belongs in a peculiar manner to the age and nation that produceit. It is an emanation of the thought of the time; and if it surviveto an after-time, it remains as a landmark of the progress of theimagination or the intellect. Some books do even more than this: theypress forward to the future age, and make appeals to its maturergenius; but in so doing they still belong to their own—they stillwear the garb which stamps them as appertaining to a particular epoch.Of that epoch, it is true, they are, intellectually, the flower andchief; they are the expression of its finer spirit, and serve as alink between the two generations of the past and the future; but ofthat future—so much changed in habits, and feelings, andknowledge—they can never, even when acting as guides and teachers,form an essential part: there is always some bond of sympathy wanting.
A single glance at our own great books will illustrate this—bookswhich are constantly reprinted, without which no library can betolerated—which are still, generation after generation, the objectsof the national worship, and are popularly supposed to afford auniversal and unfailing standard of excellence in the variousdepartments of literature. These books, although pored over as a taskand a study by the few, are rarely opened and never read by the many:they are known the least by those who reverence them most. They are,in short, idols, and their worship is not a faith, but a superstition.This kind of belief is not shaken even by experience. When a devourerof the novels of Scott, for instance, takes up Tom Jones, he, aftera vain attempt to read, may lay it down with a feeling of surprise anddissatisfaction; but Tom Jones remains