Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/205

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VIII.—FRANCHISE.
173

your education; and, during your youth, the business of us your masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of classical books; and to see that your minds are both informed of the indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the infallible accuracy of which they set the example.

207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the daily literature by which we now are principally nourished is so large in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless literally true that the world might be wrapped in the books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a single year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.

208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which, once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.