1826.] The Last Book. 139 
million reams of paper.» The very ivy that fringed my window seemed 
hot-pressed by the sun, and all the visible world awakened no other as- 
sociation than that of one vast Bookseller’s shop.—The Long Parliament 
? stood prorogued, Cromwell himself experienced an interregnum, and 
_ “Woodstock” fell to the ground. With it, also, the large folio table, 
the hot-pressed ivy, the reams of uncut cloud, the book-built domiciles 
—« all forms, all pressures past ”—evanished into thin air. I lifted up 
my eyes, and looked—nay, leaped, over the stone walls of reality, and lo ! 
a scene—which I will endeavour to describe to the reader under the 
title of 
The Garden of Books. 
It was situated in the centre of a vast and fruitful valley, planted with 
the shrubs and flowers of every clime and country, fertilized by streams 
formed of the clearest drops from every lake and torrent of the earth, 
from Helicon to the Thamis, and fanned by all the airs of heaven—the 
rich gale that brings perfume and music from the bowers of Araby 
and Persia, and the wild exulting breath that plays like the spirit of 
freedom round the summits of the Alps. On all sides the valley was 
surrounded by hills of various altitude and aspect; some “ high and hard 
to climb,” sprinkled here and there with poppies and poison-flowers— 
others (a few) ornamented with green and gentle pathways. These 
hills, I could readily conceive, were the High Places of Criticism, 
over which (as I afterwards learned from a very perspicuous pamphlet 
called the Whole Nature of Dreams) every volume was destined to 
take its course in its aerial passage to this the Library of Life. The air 
was so serene and transparent that it resembled a crystal curtain, 
through which the naked heaven looked upon the world. And there 
were sounds, the slightest echo of which was a note of music; and 
breezes that came panting from the red mouth of the rose; and colours, 
bright people of the sun, that might be regarded as little rainbow 
children, quivering and dancing over the calm face of the waters. It 
was as though the verses of a hundred Lalla Rookhs had been trans- 
ormed, by some necromantic triumph, into audible and visible existences 
—as though the birds and blossoms that lay enclosed in the amber of 
oetry, had been suddenly animated and let loose upon the air. Every 
pa ticle of the earth, every leaf that grew upon it, seemed instinct 
with the properties of the long-sought philosopher’s stone; not an 
attribute of the spot but had been placed in the great crucible of 
nature, and had come forth a beauty and a blessing to all. ‘There was 
_ avividness of being that sparkled in the dullest pebble on the ground; 
_ the waters were clearer and the shores more green than any I had ever 
"beheld; and the whole was canopied by a sky that might be said to have 
- out-Italianed Italy. This tendency to excess will be immediately recog- 
nized as at once a detraction and a charm in the region of books. 
Such was the garden wherein all the delightful poems, histories, 
narratives, dramas, sermons, ballads, tales fabulous and veritable, essays 
imaginative and demonstrative, that have occupied and elevated the 
mind of man for ages and ages, were gathered together in one common, 
or uncommon, family—exempted alike from damp and from dog’s-ear— 
and-breathing, with a vital breath, the freedom and harmony of natural 
life. Such was the Valley of Books, where every page hore the imprint 
of immortality, and sustained a separate principle of being. And is it 
wonderful that objects, which ne so long lain on the altars of the sou!, 
2 
