Society is a strong solution of books.

It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves.

If _I_ were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised well.

The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre.
You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to.
I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies.

Yet he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,--that is, of a new influx of truth or beauty,--as a nun over her missal.