by storms,--always
the same, always smiling a welcome to its visitor. Such is Horace to
my friend. To his eye "Lydia, dic per omnes" is as familiar as "Pater
noster qui es in caelis" to that of a pious Catholic. "Integer vitae,"
which he has put into manly English, his Horace opens to as Watt's
hymn-book opens to "From all that dwell below the skies." The more he
reads, the more he studies his author, the richer are the treasures he
finds. And what Horace is to him, Homer, or Virgil, or Dante is to many
a quiet reader, sick to death of the unending train of bookmakers.

I have some curious books in my library, a few of which I should like to
say something about to The Teacups, when they have no more immediately
pressing subjects before them. A library of a few thousand volumes ought
always to have some books in it which the owner almost never opens, yet
with whose backs he is so well acquainted that he feels as if he knew
something of their contents. They are like those persons whom we meet in
our daily walks, with whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter
garments, whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, we feel acquainted,
and yet whose names, whose business, whose residences, we know nothing
about. Some of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, so
rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a considerable amount
of courage to attack them.

I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a very thick, stout
volume, bound in parchment, and standing on the lower shelf, next the
fireplace. The pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she were my
librarian, and I don't doubt she would have found it if I had given only
the name on the back.

Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto in her arms. It was a
pleasing sight,--the old book in the embrace of the fresh young damsel.
I felt, on looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of a girl
who conducted us in the Temple, that ancient building in the heart of
London. The long-enduring monuments of the dead do so mock the fleeting
presence of the living!

Is n't this book enough to scare any of you? I said, as Delilah dumped
it down upon the table. The teacups jumped from their saucers as it
thumped on the board. Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, Literarius,
Philosophicus et Poeticus. Lubecae MDCCXXXIII. Perhaps I should not have
ventured to ask you to look at this old volume, if it had not been for
the fact that Dr. Johnson