DUNSFORD.

I think, Milverton, you might have given us some noble quotations from Bacon, or Cicero, about the grandeur and the comfort of study.

MILVERTON. No: if I had given you any thing, it would have been from a more unfrequented source; and if you like, I will do so now, (here Milverton called to his servant, and requested him to bring Hazlitt's Lectures on the Elizabethan Writers).

ELLESMERE. What a learned young man that servant of yours is! What a profound acquaintance he seems to have with the outsides of books, which after all is the safest and the pleasantest kind of bookknowledge.

MILVERTON. I think you might extend your commendation to a knowledge of the title pages,- but here he comes with the book. I will read you the passage I alluded to.

66

They (books) are the nearest to our thoughts: they wind into the heart; the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books: we owe every thing to their authors on this side barbarism; and we pay them easily with contempt, while living, and with an epitaph, when dead! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps; Mrs. Siddons has left the stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so, there are neither picturegalleries nor theatres-royal on Salisbury-plain, where I write this; but here, even here, with a few old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter

months, without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast; they walk out with me before dinner. After a long walk through unfrequented tracts, after starting the hare from the fern, or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my head, or being greeted by the woodman's 'stern good night,' as he strikes into his narrow homeward path, I can 'take mine ease at mine inn,' beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Heywood, are there; and, seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shakspeare is there himself, not in Cibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is concealed behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence. Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the window; and a breath of wind stirring up at a distance seems a sigh from the tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes Matheo. Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine translation! I should have no objection to pass my life in this manner out of the world, not thinking of it, nor it of me; neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes dreaming of the past, which might as well be forgotten."

ELLESMERE. A great many of the gentlemen al

luded to by Hazlitt are quite unknown to me, but he has brought out his own feelings so admirably that I do not need to know the particular instances.

Here it was necessary that I should return home, and I accordingly took leave of my friends after arranging to have another meeting soon.

CHAPTER II.

THE next time I came over to Worth Ashton, to meet Ellesmere and to hear a chapter read, it was a mild dull day; and as we had long been looking out for such a day, to go upon the downs, we resolved to take this opportunity; so, after Milverton had let the dogs loose, we all sallied forth. It was our intention to choose for our place of reading some tumuli which are at no great distance from Worth Ashton. We had a good deal of conversation in the course of our walk, which Milverton thus began.

MILVERTON. I have had such trouble to let that dog loose. He seemed to know that we were going out upon the downs, which he greatly approves of; and he was so impatient that I could not get at his collar to undo it. I thought all the time how like I was to Pope Pius the Ninth, who must have much the same difficulty in keeping his Italians quiet enough for him to free them.

ELLESMERE. That is true, I dare say; but I do not know enough of Italian politics to pronounce any thing about them. However, I can see it is a grand thing to

have a Pope "of some mark and likelihood" in our times. It gives new life to Politics.

MILVERTON. And not to politics only.

These are matters
Meanwhile, let us

ELLESMERE. Well, we shall see. we shall hear much of in our time. drink in some of this delightful air. Look at that ungainly puppy trying to catch the thistle-down as it steals up the hill. What is it? Oh! I see, a seed in the middle, and this feathery stuff round it, so that the seed may be carried hither and thither. Not unlike many a book one idea in it, and some airy stuff round it, and so it floats along merrily enough.

MILVERTON. Carry out the simile a little further, my critical friend. What animal is it that feeds upon the parent of the thistle-down? Is it a like creature

that devours the authors of the books?

DUNSFORD. I think, Ellesmere, you have not gained much by your attack upon Milverton's tribe.

ELLESMERE. I wonder, now, are authors fonder of their books than painters of their pictures?

MILVERTON. I suspect it is not a very lasting fondness, even when it is a fondness in either case. But there is a great difference between the two things.

ELLESMERE. Yes; for in the picture you have the thing actually made by its author, which he touched, which was for a long time in his presence. Let us think of that when we look at a great picture. It is a

relic of the great artist. It was one of his household gods for a time.

MILVERTON. I often think what interest there is in a picture quite independent of its subject, or its merit, or its author. I mean the interest belonging to the