I 



THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 255 



tempt the eye ; the eye grows weary of pictures, but 

 looks again. The mind wearies of books, yet cannot 

 forget that once when they were first opened in youth 

 they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books 

 exhausted, there is nothing left but words and covers. 

 It seems as if all the books in the world — really books 

 — can be bought for £10. Man's whole thought is 

 purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a 

 watch, of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and 

 paraphrase. The grains of wheat were threshed out 

 and garnered two thousand years since. Except the 

 receipts of chemists, except specifications for the 

 steam-engine, or the electric motor, there is nothing in 

 these millions of books that was not known at the 

 commencement of our era. Not a thought has been 

 added. Continual threshing has widened out the heap 

 of straw and spread it abroad, but it is empty. No- 

 thing will ever be found in it. Those original grains 

 of true thought were found beside the stream, the sea, 

 in the sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us 

 leave this beating and turning-over of empty straw ; 

 let us return to the stream and the hills ; let us ponder 

 by night in view of the stars. 



It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under 

 the great columns. On the threshold I feel nearer 

 knowledge than when within. The sun shines, and 

 southwards above the houses there is a statue crown- 

 ing the summit of some building. The figure is in the 

 midst of the light ; it stands out clear and white as if 

 in Italy. The southern blue is luminous — the beams 

 of light flow through it — the air is full of the undula- 

 tion and life of Light. There is rest in gazing at the 



