vers,
warriors, and villains,--as dead to the present generation of readers
as Cambyses,--are weeping, fighting, and intriguing. These books,
tattered and torn as they are, are read with delight to-day. The
viands are celestial if set forth on a dingy table-cloth. The gaps and
chasms which occur in pathetic or perilous chapters are felt to be
personal calamities. It is with a certain feeling of tenderness that I
look upon these books; I think of the dead fingers that have turned
over the leaves, of the dead eyes that have travelled along the lines.
An old novel has a history of its own. When fresh and new, and before
it had breathed its secret, it lay on my lady's table. She killed the
weary day with it, and when night came it was placed beneath her
pillow. At the seaside a couple of foolish heads have bent over it,
hands have touched and tingled, and it has heard vows and protestations
as passionate as any its pages contained. Coming down in the world,
Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over it by the light of a
surreptitious candle, conceiving herself the while the magnificent
Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana's lover, the pot-boy round the
corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, the auctioneer knocks the
bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it finds its way to the
quiet cove of some village library, where with some difficulty--as if
from want of teeth--and with numerous interruptions--as if from lack of
memory--it tells its old stories, and wakes tears, and blushes, and
laughter as of yore. Thus it spends its age, and in a few years it
will become unintelligible, and then, in the dust-bin, like poor human
mortals in the grave, it will rest from all its labours. It is
impossible to estimate the benefit which such books have conferred.
How often have they loosed the chain of circumstance! What unfamiliar
tears--what unfamiliar laughter they have caused! What chivalry and
tenderness they have infused into rustic loves! Of what weary hours
they have cheated and beguiled their readers! The big, solemn
history-books are in excellent preservation; the story-books are
defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows, condition is their pride,
and the best justification of their existence. They are tashed, as
roses are, by being eagerly handled and smelt. I observe, too, that
the most ancient romances are not in every case the most severely worn.
It is the pace that tells in horses, men, and