ed to look at him.

When I had told all, and given him the kind messages with which I had
been charged by husband and wife, he smiled faintly; and then, shading
his face with his hand, he seemed to muse, not cheerfully, perhaps, for
I heard him sigh once or twice.

"And Ellinor," said he at last, without looking up,--"Lady Ellinor, I
mean; she is very--very--"

"Very what, sir?"

"Very handsome still?"

"Handsome! Yes, handsome, certainly; but I thought more of her manner
than her face. And then Fanny, Miss Fanny, is so young!"

"Ah!" said my father, murmuring in Greek the celebrated lines of which
Pope's translation is familiar to all,--

"'Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, Now green in
youth, now withering on the ground.'

"Well, so they wish to see me. Did Ellinor--Lady Ellinor--say that, or
her--her husband?"

"Her husband, certainly; Lady Ellinor rather implied than said it."

"We shall see," said my father. "Open the window; this room is
stifling."

I opened the window, which looked on the Strand. The noise, the voices,
the trampling feet, the rolling wheels, became loudly audible. My father
leaned out for some moments, and I stood by his side. He turned to me
with a serene face. "Every ant on the hill," said he, "carries its load,
and its home is but made by the burden that it bears. How happy am I!
how I should bless God! How light my burden! how secure my home!"

My mother came in as he ceased. He went up to her, put his arm round her
waist and kissed her. Such caresses with him had not lost their tender
charm by custom: my mother's brow, before somewhat ruffled, grew smooth
on the instant. Yet she lifted her eyes to his in soft surprise.

"I was but thinking," said my father, apologetically, "how much I owed
you, and how much I love you!"

CHAPTER II.

And now behold us, three days after my arrival, settled in all the state
and grandeur of our own house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury, the library
of the Museum close at hand. My father spends his mornings in those lata
silentia, as Virgil calls the world beyond the grave. And a world beyond
the grave we may well call that land of the ghosts,--a book collection.

"Pisistratus," said my father one evening, as he arranged his notes
before him and rubbed his spectacles, "Pisistratus, a great library is
an awful place! There, are interred all the remains of men since the
Flood."

"It is a burial-place!" quoth my Uncle