t least, are less numerous than
choice. Among them still are to be found the most masterly writings of
the most masterly minds in the three learned professions, and the
noblest treatises on the nobler of the arts and sciences. There are many
'chronicles of eld,' which, if not true, as the Frenchman said, at any
rate '_meritent bien de l'etre_.' There are such few fictions as bear
the stamp of much individual thought, character, and observation.
Especially there is a great deal of biography; for biography is the
great, all-embracing epic of humanity.

Two suits of armor stand on guard, one on each side, by each
well-assorted bookcase. I always think it prudent to warn my incautious
visitors that these are _automata_, wound up and set to deal a box with
their gauntleted hands on each ear of each disorderly wight who puts a
book where it does not belong.

Below my library, and beyond my courtyard, is a boat in which I row
myself out in warm weather to visit my friends along the coast. When I
ply the oar, the crab-fishery is unproductive, droughts prevail, and I
am not often upset or drowned.

In my stable are sometimes to be found, eating unmingled oats, two tame
ponies, Mattapony and Poniatowski. They take my invalid acquaintance out
on airings in the daytime, and my lingering guests home at a reasonable
hour in the evening. The coachman thinks it is good for the horses to be
out in bad weather. He loves to wash the coach. For my own use, I keep a
large dapple-gray, an ex-charger of the purest blood. He has the
smoothest canter and the finest mouth that I ever felt; but, with decent
regard to appearances, and my private preferences, expressed or
understood, he never fails to prance in a manner to strike awe and
terror into all beholders, for full five minutes every time I mount him.

In the common world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable--always in some
respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to
be--all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as
Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as
eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the
Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand
everything but entomology and numismatology; and if I do not understand
them, the only reason is that, as the dear little boys say, 'I _doe_
want to.'

The blossom-end of the day I keep to myself in my castle. I spend all
the morn