always read and
study as if under their holy eyes. Ivy runs thickly over their deep
arched recesses, and over the stags' heads which surmount them. In
winter, little but painted beams and glow come through them. In summer,
the oriel opens of an evening to show me the phantom ships that haunt
the misty, dreamy harbor; and the lattices that look westerly over the
lake-like mouth of the Charles, are seldom shut against the sun or moon.

The floor is smoothly paved with broad, square slabs of freestone, on
which is here or there engraved one or another illustrious name, like a
'footprint on the sands of time,' with a date of birth and death. Tables
that match the bookcases support portfolios containing allegorical
designs by Relszch, Blake, and Albrecht Durer. On a writing desk, that
was once Vittoria Colonna's, a little Parian angel holds my ink for me,
kneeling as if to ask a blessing upon it, and to entreat me to blot no
pages with it in the souls whereon I write,

[Greek: 'Mede mousa moi
Genoit aoidos etis umnesei kaka']

Before the reading chairs, plenty of tiger and leopard skins lie in wait
to cherish the cool feet of students, but there is nothing to trip up my
own, along the long diameter of the long oval room, if sometimes the
fancy seizes me to walk up and down there for hours alone, listening to
the 'voices' that are not 'from without.'

At the end opposite to the oriel, I have just had placed an organ, the
twin of the new one at the Music Hall, except that the faces on the
pipes are beautiful, and do not look as if it hurt them to pipe. The
world may be too small; but the organ cannot possibly be too large.
Malibran, Jenny Lind, or Mrs. Mott usually sings to it of an evening,
accompanied by Franz, Schubert, or Mendelssohn; or Beethoven drops in to
play one of his symphonies. Sunday nights, Handel performs upon it
regularly for a choir composed of Vaughan, Herbert, the minister who
chants 'Calm on the listening ear of night,' Madame Guyon, and Sarah
Adams. Between their hymns, Robertson preaches a sermon and reads from
the liturgy of King's Chapel. This service is designed as a special
easement to the consciences and stomachs alike of those oppressed
Christians, whom modern customs and physical laws impel, of an
afternoon, to be dining and digesting precisely at the hours during
which their pastors are unaccountably and unjustifiably in the habit of
preaching.

The books upon the shelves, last no