ions were placed
in my younger days, that I obtained a seat from an adjoining room and
rested myself before it. After sitting half an hour or more, I wandered
to another part of the building, but only to return again to my "first
love," where I remained till the throng had disappeared one after
another, and the officer reminding me that it was time to close.

It was eight o'clock before I reached my lodgings. Although fatigued by
the day's exertions, I again resumed the reading of Roscoe's "Leo X.,"
and had nearly finished seventy-three pages, when the clock on St.
Martin's Church apprised me that it was two. He who escapes from slavery
at the age of twenty years, without any education, as did the writer of
this letter, must read when others are asleep, if he would catch up with
the rest of the world. "To be wise," says Pope, "is but to know how
little can be known." The true searcher after truth and knowledge is
always like a child; although gaining strength from year to year, he
still "learns to labour and to wait." The field of labour is ever
expanding before him, reminding him that he has yet more to learn;
teaching him that he is nothing more than a child in knowledge, and
inviting him onward with a thousand varied charms. The son may take
possession of the father's goods at his death, but he cannot inherit
with the property the father's cultivated mind. He may put on the
father's old coat, but that is all: the immortal mind of the first
wearer has gone to the tomb.

Property may be bequeathed, but knowledge cannot. Then let him who
would be useful in his day and generation be up and doing. Like the
Chinese student who learned perseverance from the woman whom he saw
trying to rub a crow-bar into a needle, so should we take the experience
of the past to lighten our feet through the paths of the future.

The next morning at ten, I was again at the door of the great building;
was soon within its walls seeing what time would not allow of the
previous day. I spent some hours in looking through glass cases, viewing
specimens of minerals, such as can scarcely be found in any place out of
the British Museum. During this day I did not fail to visit the great
Library. It is a spacious room, surrounded with large glass cases filled
with volumes, whose very look tells you that they are of age. Around,
under the cornice, were arranged a number of old black-looking
portraits, in all probability the authors of some of the works