s
unattractive in external appearance, and to most families would have
been an undesirable residence. Having originally been two houses,
afterward thrown together, it consisted of a good many small rooms,
connected by long passages, all of which with great ingenuity he made
available for holding books, with which indeed the house was lined from
top to bottom. His own sitting-room, which was the largest in the house,
was filled with the handsomest of them, arranged with much taste,
according to his own fashion, with due regard to size, color, and
condition; and he used to contemplate these, his carefully accumulated
and much prized treasures, with even more pleasure and pride than the
greatest connoisseur his finest specimens of the old masters: and
justly, for they were both the necessaries and the luxuries of life to
him; both the very instruments whereby he won, hardly enough, his daily
bread, and the source of all his pleasures and recreations--the pride of
his eyes and the joy of his heart.

His Spanish and Portuguese collection, which at one time was one of the
best, if not itself the best to be found in the possession of any
private individual, was the most highly-prized portion of his library.
It had been commenced by his uncle, Mr. Hill, long prior to my father's
first visit to Lisbon; and having originated in the love Mr. Hill
himself had for the literature of those countries, it was carried
forward with more ardor when he found that his nephew's taste and
abilities were likely to turn it to good account. It comprised a
considerable number of manuscripts, some of them copied by Mr. Hill from
rare MSS. in private and convent libraries.

Many of these old books being in vellum or parchment bindings, he had
taken much pains to render them ornamental portions of the furniture of
his shelves. His brother Thomas was skillful in calligraphy; and by his
assistance their backs were painted with some bright color, and upon it
the title placed lengthwise in large gold letters of the old English
type. Any one who had visited his library will remember the
tastefully-arranged pyramids of these curious-looking books.

Another fancy of his was to have all those books of lesser value, which
had become ragged and dirty, covered, or rather bound, in colored cotton
prints, for the sake of making them clean and respectable in their
appearance, it being impossible to afford the cost of having so many put
into better bindings.