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For persons of less complete education and leisure a humbler and shorter list may be acceptable. I subjoin my own choice for such as can obtain access to them, setting them down as they occur, without classification:—Green's "History of England," Professor Bryce's "History of the Holy Roman Empire," Emerson's twelve essays on "Society and Solitude," Helps's "Friends in Council," "Companions of My Solitude," and "Organization of Common Life," Boswell's "Johnson," Marcus Aurelius's translation of Plato's "Laws," Cowper's translation of Homer's "Odyssey," Mozley on "Miracles," Longfellow's "Dante," Plutarch's "Lives," Milton's prose works, Evelyn's "Diary," Pepys's Diary," Michelet's "History of France," Merovingian Era," Thierry's " Norman Conquest," Robertson's and Prescott's "Mexico" and "Peru," Strickland's "Queens of England," "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson," Charles Lamb's "Elia," Montaigne's "Essays," St. Simon's " Memoirs of the Reign of of Louis XIV.," Molière's plays, Bossuet's "Funeral Orations," Shakspeare's plays, and specially his sonnets, R. Burns's poems, Coleridge's poems, Matthew Arnold's poems, Mrs. Browning's poems, Crabbe's poems, Bishop Hall's "Meditations," William Tyndale's works, Sir W. Dawson's "Chain of Life " and "Fossil Men," Sydney Smith's essays, E. Thring's "Theory and Practice of Teaching," Whately's "Cautions for the Times," Newman's "Parochial Sermons," MacCulloch's "Illustrations of the Attributes of God from Physical Nature," Burnet's "History of his own Times," Whewell's "Foundations of Morals," Sir Walter Scott's Life (3), Wraxall's "Memoirs," L. Morris's "Epic of Hades," Thackeray's "Roundabout Papers," Basil Hail's "Voyages and Travels," Bacon's Essays, Huc's "Travels in Tartary," Pascal's "Provincial Letters," Sir W. Muir's "Life of Mohammed," "The Spectator," John Forster's (Foster) "Essays" and his Biography by Ryland, Meyrick on "The Necessity of Dogma," Henry Rogers on "Eclipse of Faith," F. D. Maurice's "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," Goldwin Smith on Rational Religion. Add to these an occasional course of reading in the Church Times, the Guardian, the Record, the Rock, the Watchman^[1], the Nonconformist, the Inguirer, and the Freethinker, in order to see how diligently our contemporaries endeavour not to understand but to misrepresent each other; and by the aid of the books above mentioned I think the unlearned reader will find enough to instruct, amuse, and astonish him both in England and elsewhere.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Dear Sir,—You have addressed me as the President of the Baptist Union. I am not sure, however, that I should carry all or the greater number of my brother Baptists with me in any specification I might make. In such matters there is liberty of opinion among us, and considerable divergence.

Allow me to point out that in the list as now published in the Contemporary Review by Sir John Lubbock there are many differences from that to which you have given currency. Three differences are almost all in the direction of your correspondents' criticisms. Thus the Bible now heads the list, and, in fact, there seems little to improve, on the whole, save by way of addition. Several of the Eastern books mentioned would be of true service to but few, We are all more or less conscientiously disposed to rate those books most highly which have most deeply influenced ourselves. We happened to read them at a specially susceptible period of our lives, and they are more to us than other books, not only through what they are in themselves, but through what they have suggested. For myself, I would say that three books not in the lists have, on the whole, done more for me than almost any others, excepting the few great masterpieces that have become a part of the intellectual life of every thoughtful man. These three are—(1) John Foster's Essays (surely not John Forster's, as printed in my friend Mr. Edward White's letter, a very different man); (2) Jonathan Edwards's "On the Freedom of the Will;" and (3) Stanley's "Life of Dr. Arnold." At a later period I find more in Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosopliy " than in any metaphysical work I had read—certainly more than in that of Lewes's, which Sir John Lubbock mentions. On a general review of the list, I may venture to remark:—

1. In theology, I would omit Wake's "Apostolic Fathers," and add Augustine's "City of God;" also Butler's "Sermons on Human Nature" to his "Analogy." As an "epoch-making book" I would also mention Anselm's "Cur Deus Homo." The theological part of the list is in truth very scanty, nor have I much to add to it, save that in my judgment Baxter's "Saints' Rest" (in an unabridged, unaltered form) is worthy to be placed beside Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living and Holy Dying;" and Charnock's posthumous discourses on "The Existence and Attributes of God" have always seemed to me the very flower of Puritan divinity.

2. In the Classical list there is little to add. There should be more of Plato—say the "Protagoras" and "Phædrus," with, of course, the "Apology of Socrates" as a supplement to the "Phædo." To the "De Corona" of Demosthenes I would add other orations, notably that "Against Leptines." Also the "Agamemnon" of Æschylus might be taken without its two companions, so making room for the whole "Œdipus" trilogy of Sophocles. To the "Medea" of Euripides why not add the "Alkestis" and the "Hecuba"? Aristophanes we should at least have the "Clouds," if not the "Birds" and Frogs."

The Latin list is scanty, and I would add to it considerably more of Tacitus—at least the Agricola and Annals I.—even if some of Livy had to be taken off.