From these documents of old Collins it seems that a peer conducts himself in a solemn, good, pious, manly kind of way when he takes leave of life, and when he has hospitable habits, and is valiant in his procedure throughout; and that in general a King, with a noble approximation to what was right, had nominated this man, saying “Come you to me, sir; come out of the common level of the people, where you are liable to be trampled upon; come here and take a district of country and make it into your own image more or less; be a king under me, and understand that that is your function.”  I say this is the most divine thing that a human being can do to other human beings, and no kind of being whatever has so much of the character of God Almighty’s Divine Government as that thing we see that went all over England, and that is the grand soul of England’s history.

It is historically true that down to the time of Charles I., it was not understood that any man was made a peer without having a merit in him to constitute him a proper subject for a peerage.  In Charles I.’s time it grew to be known or said that if a man was by birth a gentleman, and was worth L10,000 a-year, and bestowed his gifts up and down among courtiers, he could be made a peer.  Under Charles II. it went on with still more rapidity, and has been going on with ever increasing velocity until we see the perfect break-neck pace at which they are now going. (A laugh.) And now a peerage is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in these old times, I could go into a great many more details about things of that sort, but I must turn to another branch of the subject.

One remark more about your reading.  I do not know whether it has been sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds of books.  When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most departments of books—­in all books, if you take it in a wide sense—­you will find that there is a division of good books and bad books—­there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book.  I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present.  It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—­that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.  I entirely call that in question.  I even venture to deny it. (Laughter and cheers.) It would be much safer and better would he have no concern with books at all than with some of them.  You know these are my views.  There are a number, an increasing number, of books that are decidedly to him not useful. (Hear.) But he will learn also that a certain number of books were written by a supreme, noble kind of people—­not a very great number—­but a great number adhere more or less to that side of things.  In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men’s souls—­divided into sheep and goats. (Laughter and applause.) Some of them are calculated to be of very great advantage in teaching—­in forwarding the teaching of all generations.  Others are going down, down, doing more and more, wilder and wilder mischief.