...following through its minutest ramifications a certain memorable period of history, — projects which led me from author to author in wide succession, and...never form the leading and regular business of our lives. Reading has its periods of satiety. I fell sometimes, for want of an object sufficiently to...

...a student values projects that lead him "from author to author in wide succession, and [that take] away the oppressive feelings of passiveness which...to the simple and direct reading of a single work" (Fleetwood, 139—40). Such activity of mind is especially visible in the reading of history, which...