of St. Martin; against which authorities Lovel had nothing to oppose,
having never heard of them till that moment.

Mr. Oldbuck next exhibited thumb-screws, which had given the Covenanters
of former days the cramp in their joints, and a collar with the name of
a fellow convicted of theft, whose services, as the inscription bore,
had been adjudged to a neighbouring baron, in lieu of the modern
Scottish punishment, which, as Oldbuck said, sends such culprits to
enrich England by their labour, and themselves by their dexterity.
Many and various were the other curiosities which he showed;--but it
was chiefly upon his books that he prided himself, repeating, with a
complacent air, as he led the way to the crowded and dusty shelves, the
verses of old Chaucer--

For he would rather have, at his bed-head,
A twenty books, clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle, or his philosophy,
Than robes rich, rebeck, or saltery.

This pithy motto he delivered, shaking his head, and giving each
guttural the true Anglo-Saxon enunciation, which is now forgotten in the
southern parts of this realm.

The collection was indeed a curious one, and might well be envied by
an amateur. Yet it was not collected at the enormous prices of modern
times, which are sufficient to have appalled the most determined as well
as earliest bibliomaniac upon record, whom we take to have been none
else than the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, as, among other slight
indications of an infirm understanding, he is stated, by his veracious
historian, Cid Hamet Benengeli, to have exchanged fields and farms for
folios and quartos of chivalry. In this species of exploit, the good
knight-errant has been imitated by lords, knights, and squires of our
own day, though we have not yet heard of any that has mistaken an inn
for a castle, or laid his lance in rest against a windmill. Mr. Oldbuck
did not follow these collectors in such excess of expenditure; but,
taking a pleasure in the personal labour of forming his library, saved
his purse at the expense of his time and toil, He was no encourager of
that ingenious race of peripatetic middle-men, who, trafficking between
the obscure keeper of a stall and the eager amateur, make their profit
at once of the ignorance of the former, and the dear-bought skill and
taste of the latter. When such were mentioned in his hearing, he seldom
failed to point out how nec