form some idea of the ground that he covered; and if there was a great movement stirring the hearts and the hopes of men, or a great event that seemed likely to become a landmark in history, Dawson had his say about it. He went up and down the country with his lectures, and his voice was heard in every city throughout the land. In those days when books and magazines and newspapers were far fewer and less accessible to ordinary people than they are to-day, his coming was an event, and he quickened the minds of those who heard him in little country towns with a force that lasted and leavened long after he had gone away. He taught people, not of set purpose, but by suggestion, what to read and how to read; and he took them to the great books that are best worth reading. For a great book not only teaches and inspires, it reveals. At the heart of every great book is a man; and the book reveals the man who wrote it to the man who reads it. It also reveals the man who reads it to himself. And the harvest of a great book is not only what we find in it, but what it helps us to find in ourselves, Dawson was the most skilful of interpreters, in showing men what to look for and where to find it. When he died the Spectator described him as the most famous intellectual " middle-man " of his day. If it spoke without any deliberate contempt, it certainly spoke with a certain air of patronage, such as we are accustomed to expect in a newspaper that has always had a Moses of its own to go up into the mount on every Thursday afternoon and to bring back with him the infallible oracles of heaven for Saturday's ** leader." But to be a " middleman " even in literature and philosophy—is no
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