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rest. It is a chorus of praise such as none other of earth’s 
children have the voice or the heart to utter. As I listen I am 
carried away by its glorious rapture ; my being melts in the 
tenderness of my impassioned joy ; my eyes are dim with I know 
not what profound humility.” 
Hamerton says, in one of his books, that French country people 
have a pretty belief that, in its crackling and singing, a log fire 
is but giving out the song of the birds which the living tree 
absorbed. Gissing hus one such happy thought of his own, and 
it is that after a happy evening among his books, when turning 
at the door to look back, he sees the warm glow reflecting on the 
shining wood, on his writing-table, and glinting from the gilt 
title of some stately volume—as it illumes this picture and half 
disperses the gloom on that. ‘‘I could,” he says, ‘‘ imagine that 
the books do but await my departure to begin talking among 
themselves.” 
As I have already said, his books were Ryecroft’s friends. How 
he gloats over the treasures for which he has pinched and saved ! 
With what satisfaction does he survey on his book-shelves the 
‘‘ rageed veterans ” which typify for him so many glorious hours 
spent free from the pressing cares of the moment! He says: ‘I 
know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library 
copy as one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. 
For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent, and I 
have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all 
sorts of things. My Gibbon, for instance, which I have read, 
and read, and read again for more than thirty years—never do 
I open it but the scent of the noble page restores to me all the 
exultant happiness of that moment when I received it as a 
prize. Or, my Shakespeare, which has an odour which carries me 
yet further back in life ; for the volumes belonged to my father, 
and before I was old enough to read them with understanding, it 
was often permitted me as a treat to take down one of them from 
the book-case and reverently to turn the leaves.” And so he 
goes on recalling incidents of his reading; regretting his lost 
opportunities, recording his satisfaction that his experience has 
meeueen More barren. . 6). 2 see ws 
It has often been remarked that Gissing’s writings bave a de- 
pressing effect. His atheism, perhaps, makes this inevitable. 
In one passage, having contrasted two philosophic theories, he 
says, ‘‘ What if I am incapable of either supposition? There 
remains but the dignity of a hopeless cause, and how can there 
sound the hymn of praise ?” 
«That is best for everyone which the common nature of all 
doth send unto everyone, and then is it best when she doth send 
