rofessor's name
as bound up with patient, self-effacing scholarship and a highly
developed spirituality. But I digress. Cast your eye over this little
group of foreign writers. Here is Dumas,--Jean Baptiste Dumas,--whose
'Lecons sur la philosophic chimique,' delivered in 1835, were considered
worthy of being published thirty years later. The quaint volume that
comes next is by Du Maurier, who was French ambassador to the Hague
about 1620. The title, in the Dutch, is 'Propositie gedan door den
Heere van Maurier,' etc.--'Propositions Advanced by the Sieur du
Maurier,' one of the Regent's able and merry-hearted diplomats, I take
it. And here is Goethe; he would repay your reading. Rudolf Goethe's
'Mitteilungen ueber Obst- und Gartenbau' is one of the standard works on
horticulture.

"And finally," said Cooper with a flash of pride quite unusual in him,
"the treasure of my little library--Homer; again a first edition."

"Homer!" I cried. "An _editio princeps_!"

"Nearly one hundred and fifty years old," he said. "The Rev. Henry Homer
deserved well of his British countrymen when he gave to the world--it
was in 1767--his 'Inquiry Into the Measures of Preserving and Improving
the Publick Roads of this Kingdom.'"

Cooper sat down and eyed me doubtfully, as if awaiting an unfavourable
opinion. His face quite lit up when I hastened to assure him that his
library was one of the most impressive collections it had ever been my
good fortune to know.

"Very few collections," I told him, "bear the impress of a personality.
As a rule they are shopfuls of costly masterpieces such as any
multi-millionaire may have if he doesn't prefer horses or monkey
dinners. But how often does one find a treasure-house like yours,
Cooper, revealing an exquisitely discriminating taste in co-operation
with the bold originality of the true amateur?"

XXXII

CHOPIN'S SUCCESSORS

"It is his own composition, the final word in modern music," I had been
told. "He does not merely play the concerto; he lives it. Be sure to
watch his face." It was not a very impressive face as artists go. It was
rather heavy, rather sullen, and seemingly incapable of mirroring more
than the elementary passions. The great pianist entered the hall almost
unwillingly, and wound his way among the musicians with consummate
indifference to the roar of applause that greeted him. You might have
said that he was once more a little boy being scourged to his piano day
afte