periods the eloquent gentleman devolves amidst a
respectful silence. His audience do not understand him, but they see
that the clergyman does, and the doctor does; and so they are content,
and look as attentive and wise as possible. Then, in connection with the
schoolroom, there is a public library, where books are exchanged once a
month. This library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels
and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are
unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon
their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than
ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom
Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of
Sophia. Moses comes home from market with his stock of shagreen
spectacles. Lovers, warriors, and villains,--as dead to the present
generation of readers as Cambyses,--are weeping, fighting, and
intriguing. These books, tattered and torn as they are, are read with
delight to-day. The viands are celestial, if set forth on a dingy
table-cloth. The gaps and chasms which occur in pathetic or perilous
chapters are felt to be personal calamities. It is with a certain
feeling of tenderness that I look upon these books; I think of the dead
fingers that have turned over the leaves, of the dead eyes that have
travelled along the lines. An old novel has a history of its own. When
fresh and new, and before it had breathed its secret, it lay on my
lady's table. She killed the weary day with it, and when night came it
was placed beneath her pillow. At the sea-side a couple of foolish
heads have bent over it, hands have touched and tingled, and it has
heard vows and protestations as passionate as any its pages contained.
Coming down in the world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over
it by the light of a surreptitious candle, conceiving herself the while
the magnificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana's lover, the
pot-boy round the corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, the
auctioneer knocks the bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it
finds its way to the quiet cove of some village library, where with some
difficulty--as if from want of teeth--and with numerous
interruptions--as if from lack of memory--it tells its old stories, and
wakes tears, and blushes, and laughter as of yore. Thus it spends its
age, and in a few years it will become unintelligible, and then, in