f the invisible treasures of libraries, for it was
written in a cipher of his own invention, but, by a very curious chance,
the key to that cipher was unintentionally betrayed through comparison
with another paper, and the journal was brought to light, and many
things made visible which the writer dreamed not of confiding to future
ages. Pepys was an indefatigable, and, we cannot but half suspect, an
unscrupulous collector. Volumes of autographs, great scrap-books filled
with prints, tickets, invitations, ballads, let us into the visible and
invisible of the reign of Charles II. A manuscript music-book, elegantly
bound, and labelled, "Songs altered to suit my Voice," carried us back
to the days when, after going to the play in the afternoon, Pepys and
some of his companions "came back to my house and had musique."

Pepys certainly never meant to be one of the invisible things in his own
library, for every book contains an engraving from his own portrait.
Should he ever come back to look after the possessions he so much
valued, he can surely be at no loss to find the likeness of the form he
once wore. If a spirit can retain any human vanity and self-importance,
his must certainly be unpleasantly surprised that the great collection
looks small in these days, and attracts but little attention. To
antiquaries and lovers of the odd and curious it must ever be valuable;
but the obligation of having a fellow of Magdalen at one's elbow much
interferes with that quiet, cozy "mousing" so dear to the soul of a
bibliomaniac. We heartily wished that we could have made an appointment
with the shade of old Pepys, and, returning to the library in the
stillness of midnight, have found him ready to show off his collections.
That would have been, indeed, the visible and the invisible of the
Pepysian Library. The Cambridge men of to-day are too busy about their
own affairs to look much into Pepys's collections, which remain quietly
ensconced under the guardianship of Old Magdalen, one of the visible
links between the seen and unseen in libraries.

Nestled quietly in an old Elizabethan house, among the great trees at
Wotton, is the library of John Evelyn. Belonging to the same age as that
of Pepys, but collected by a man of widely different tastes and
character, there is much outwardly to charm as well as to elevate the
mind in the influences shed around it. Here are tall copies and folios
of grave works, classic and historical, the solid l