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POINTS OF VIEW.
that, like Mr. Payn's young friend, they have grown reconciled to a pretended sensation, and strive dutifully to make the most of it? Alas! such pretenses are not always the facile things they seem, and if a book is ever to become a friend to either young or old, it must be treated with that simple integrity on which all lasting amity is built. "Read, not to contradict and confute," says Lord Bacon, "nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse;" and, in the delicate irony of this advice, we discern the satisfaction of the philosopher in having deprived the mass of mankind of the only motives which prompt them to read at all.
