ua; and his handsome head in the Eastern turban, turned into
white marble, stands above the entrance-door.

Coming back from the Paduan hall, so weird and ghostly, we glance along
the shelves at a long row of volumes which bear De Quincey's name, and
we need not open a page to feel the mysterious spell of the opium-eater.
Like one of those strange dreams of his seems a remembrance which comes
back to us with his name. A quaint, tall house in the old part of
Edinburgh has admitted us into a quiet apartment, where, as the twilight
is creeping in through the windows, a small gray man receives us, with
graceful and tender courtesy. He converses with a felicity of language
like that of his printed pages, but in a voice so sweet, so low, so
exquisitely modulated, that the magical tone vibrates on the ear like
music. It was De Quincey, who held us entranced until darkness gathered
around us, then bade us farewell, his kind words lingering on the air,
as, with a flickering candle in his hand, he flitted up the winding
stair, and vanished away.

Another volume bears the name of William Wordsworth, and beneath his
autograph he writes that it was purchased at Bath from a
circulating-library. It is that strange journal of the Margravine of
Bareith, sister of Frederic the Great, a sad story of those who dwell in
kings' houses; but we think only of Wordsworth, and of the viewless
history of the book carried by the poet from circulating in Bath to
quiet rural Rydal Mount, and now having wandered over to New England.

A dainty volume near by bears the autograph of Rogers, and though the
association is not so purely imaginative, perhaps, as a poet should call
up, yet it always brings to our mind the breakfasts at his house, of
which many of our friends have partaken, and related divers stories
concerning those morning refections. They are invisible feasts to us,
for we never even picked up the crumbs from them, except at second hand;
yet this elegant little book knew all about them, and heard what was
said before, and also behind--the table-cloth.

Singular experiences connected with books are sometimes known to their
owners, quite invisible to others. In yonder corner are two volumes.
Book-collectors know that they are rare, and the uninitiated think they
contain queer old wood-cuts. To us that corner is haunted; an invisible
lady hovers about those volumes. Once upon a time an order was given for
those books, but the answer came ba