ws, the doctor dives into
his library.

For the old misers it was pleasant to go down into their bullion vaults
and feel that they were rich enough to buy up all the town, with the
proud Earl in his mortgaged castle. And to many people there is a
peculiar satisfaction in the society of the great and learned; nor can
they forget the time when they talked to the great poet, or had a
moment's monopoly of Royalty. But--

"That place that doth contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes for variety I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels."

Not only is there the pleasant sense of property,--the rare editions,
and the wonderful bargains, and the acquisitions of some memorable
self-denial,--but there are grateful memories, and the feeling of a high
companionship. When it first arrived, yon volume kept its owner up all
night, and its neighbor introduced him to realms more delightful and
more strange than if he had taken Dr. Wilkins's lunarian journey. In
this biography, as in a magician's mirror, he was awed and startled by
foreshadowings of his own career; and, ever since he sat at the feet of
yonder sacred sage, he walks through the world with a consciousness,
blessed and not vainglorious, that his being contains an element shared
by few besides. And even those heretics inside the wires--like caged
wolves or bottled vipers--their keeper has come to entertain a certain
fondness for them, and whilst he detests the species, he would feel a
pang in parting with his own exemplars.

Now that the evening lamp is lit, let us survey the Doctor's library.
Like most of its coeval collections, its foundations are laid with
massive folios. These stately tomes are the Polyglotts of Antwerp and
Paris, the Critici Sacri and Poli Synopsis. The colossal theologians who
flank them, are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and
Episcopius, Ballarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg
Centuriators,--natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior.
These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,--Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a
row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,--behold the
entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren,
and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains
Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fas