oth, and the more daring of the two engages on
the first opportunity to "settle the fellow." They are occupied in
ardent colloquy, whether on the predicates or other matters it imports
not, when a sudden pause in the conversation enables them to be aware
that there is a human being breathing close on the other side of the
"oak." The light is extinguished, the door opened, and a terrific blow
from a strong and scientifically levelled fist hurls the listener
down-stairs to the next landing-place, from which resting-place he hears
thundered after him for his information, "If you come back again, you
scoundrel, I'll put you into the hands of Dr Fusby." From that source,
however, no one had much to dread for some considerable period, during
which the Doctor was confined to his bedroom by serious indisposition.
It refreshed the recollection of this anecdote, years after I had heard
it, and many years after the date attributed to it, to have seen a
dignified scholar make what appeared to me an infinitesimally narrow
escape from sharing the fate of Dr Fusby, having indeed just escaped it
by satisfactorily proving to a hasty philosopher that he was not the
party guilty of keeping a certain copy of Occam on the sentences of
Peter Lombard out of his reach.]

Descending, however, from so high a sphere, we shall find that the
collector and the scholar are so closely connected with each other that
it is difficult to draw the line of separation between them. As dynamic
philosophers say, they act and react on each other. The possession of
certain books has made men acquainted with certain pieces of knowledge
which they would not otherwise have acquired. It is, in fact, one of the
amiable weaknesses of the set, to take a luxurious glance at a new
acquisition. It is an outcropping of what remains in the man, of the
affection towards a new toy that flourished in the heart of the boy.
Whether the right reverend or right honourable Thomas has ever taken his
new-bought Baskerville to bed with him, as the Tommy that was has taken
his humming-top, is a sort of case which has not actually come under
observation in the course of my own clinical inquiries into the malady;
but I am not prepared to state that it never occurred, and can attest
many instances where the recent purchase has kept the owner from bed far
on in the night. In this incidental manner is a general notion sometimes
formed of the true object and tenor of a book, which is retained