of
extravagant labour there have left marks upon him physically that can
never be effaced. But that bookcase fascinates me. Half the great names
of modern thought are in those books.'

And so they were. The first Langham opened had a Latin dedication in a
quavering old man's hand, 'Amico et discipulo meo,' signed 'Fredericus
Gulielmus Schelling.' The next bore the autograph of Alexander von
Humboldt, the next that of Boeckh, the famous classic, and so on. Close
by was Niebuhr's History, in the title-page of which a few lines in the
historian's handwriting bore witness to much 'pleasant discourse between
the writer and Roger Wendover, at Bonn, in the summer of 1847.' Judging
from other shelves farther down, he must also have spent some time,
perhaps an academic year, at Tuebingen, for here were most of the early
editions of the _Leben Jesu_, with some corrections from Strauss's hand,
and similar records of Baur, Ewald, and other members or opponents of
the Tuebingen school. And so on, through the whole bookcase. Something of
everything was there--Philosophy, Theology, History, Philology. The
collection was a medley, and made almost a spot of disorder in the
exquisite neatness and system of the vast gathering of which it formed
part. Its bond of union was simply that it represented the forces of an
epoch, the thoughts, the men, the occupations which had absorbed the
energies of ten golden years. Every book seemed to be full of paper
marks; almost every title-page was covered with minute writing, which,
when examined, proved to contain a record of lectures, or conversations
with the author of the volume, sometimes a string of anecdotes or a
short biography, rapidly sketched out of the fulness of personal
knowledge, and often seasoned with a subtle causticity and wit. A
history of modern thinking Germany, of that 'unextinguished hearth'
whence the mind of Europe has been kindled for three generations, might
almost have been evolved from that bookcase and its contents alone.

Langham, as he stood peering among the ugly, vilely-printed German
volumes, felt suddenly a kind of magnetic influence creeping over him.
The room seemed instinct with a harsh commanding presence. The history
of a mind and soul was written upon the face of it; every shelf, as it
were, was an autobiographical fragment, an 'Apologia pro Vita Mea.' He
drew away from the books at last with the uneasy feeling of one who
surprises a confidence, and looked f