time of the approaching end--how he could reckon up his good use of the
talents bestowed on him, counting among them his opportunities for the
encouragement of art as an elevator and improver of the human race.]

Let us, however, summon a more potent spirit of this order. He is a
different being altogether from those gentle shadows who have flitted
past us already. He was known in the body by many hard names, such as
the Vampire, the Dragon, &c. He was an Irish absentee, or, more
accurately, a refugee, since he had made himself so odious on his ample
estate that he could not live there. How on earth he should have set
about collecting books is one of the inscrutable mysteries which ever
surround the diagnosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his using
his books by reading them as out of the question, he yet was never known
to indulge in that fondling and complacent examination of their exterior
and general condition, which, to Inchrule and others of his class,
seemed to afford the highest gratification that, as sojourners through
this vale of tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuriate in
the collective pride--like that of David when he numbered his people--of
beholding how his volumes increased in multitude, and ranged with one
another, like well-sized and properly dressed troops, along an ample
area of book-shelves. His collection--if it deserved the name--was piled
in great heaps in garrets, cellars, and warerooms, like unsorted goods.
They were accumulated, in fact, not so much that the owner might have
them, as that other people might not. If there were a division of the
order into positive, or those who desire to make collections--and
negative, or those who desire to prevent them being made, his case would
properly belong to the latter. Imagine the consternation created in a
small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting among them of a _helluo
librorum_ with such propensities, armed with illimitable means, enabling
him to desolate the land like some fiery dragon! What became of the
chaotic mass of literature he had brought together no one knew. It was
supposed to be congenial to his nature to have made a great bonfire of
it before he left the world; but a little consideration showed such a
feat to be impossible, for books may be burnt in detail by extraneous
assistance, but it is a curious fact that, combustible as paper is
supposed to be, books won't burn. If you doubt this, pitch that folio
S