ials, we rejoice with them, we know all their secrets, and share with
them many of our own. Is it possible, that, shut up between those
covers, long unknown, all these existed which have since made life
brighter and better to us?

In Sterling's "Onyx Ring," Walsingham, the poet, takes down a volume
from Sir Charles Harcourt's library, and reads a charming romance,
apparently from its pages. A lady of the company afterwards turned to
the same book, which proved to be a work of Jeremy Bentham's, and
searched in vain for the graceful narrative. Walsingham smiled at her
perplexity, and said, "Those only find who know where to look."

The invisible world of thought, and the invisible representation of it
in books, have known many changes since Cicero looked at the volume
which Marcus Varro had illustrated; and from an earlier civilization
than Cicero's comes the exclamation of the soul-wearied Job, "Oh that
mine adversary had written a book!" Solomon also exclaims, "Of making
many books there is no end." He dreamed not of the extent to which the
manufacture would be carried in these days. On the other hand, how
little we know of the literary world existing in the days of Job or
Solomon! and may we not be led by these exclamations to suspect not only
a large supply of books, but even the existence of an Arabian Review or
a Dead-Sea Magazine?

The increase of wealth, and the restless activity of intellect in the
new world which surrounds us, lead naturally to the accumulation of
libraries, both public and private. In our daily walks we often pass
dwellings which we know hold literary treasures. Sometimes the beauties
of Nature can be combined with those of Art, even in a city, around the
library. We recall one from the windows of which we look forth, not on
crowded streets, but on the wide river as it bends to the sea. Behind
the distant hills the heavens are resplendent with the autumnal hues of
sunset, the water is aglow with reflected glories, while swooping and
sailing over the waves come the white sea-gulls. It is a leaf from the
illuminated prayer-missal for all eyes and hearts. The literary
treasures of that friend's library have been elsewhere described, some
of them gifts from wise men, earnest women, world-worshipped poets,
bearing on their leaves the signatures of their authors' friendship.
Other treasures are there, visible and invisible, among which we would
fain linger, but we must pass on. We enter another lib