of these comforters is an inveterate billiard-player, or is a member of a 

 boat-club, or wastes his evenings at an idling club. The wife even will 

 look sober when the express-man stops at the door, and heave a sigh 

 that agitates the husband's heart and a very brilliant set of diamonds 

 on her own breast. Moneyed men hardly remark on these extrava- 

 gances, but they deprecate any considerable expenditure in books. 

 Now it is a mere matter of taste, but a man is not lightly to be blamed 

 for preferring to spend an evening in his book-room to yawning at a 

 club, or being spattered with mud or snow behind a span of fast 

 horses ; or for investing a year's cigars and oats in a folio Caesar or 

 a wide-margined Dibdin, especially when he thus not only gratifies his 

 hobby, but has his stores intact at the years end. It must be said too 

 in defense of the Bibliomaniac that his habits are almost invariably 

 praiseworthy and his morals irreproachable. While one is in com- 

 pany with Bacon and Shakespeare and Milton, he is in little danger of 

 committing any undignified or immoral act. 



Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy quotes Heinsius as saying: 

 " I no sooner come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, exclud- 

 ing lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, 

 the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap 

 of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a 

 spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men 

 that know not this happiness." And Becatello wrote to Alphonso, 

 King of Naples : " One thing I want to know of your prudence, 

 whether I or Poggius have done best ; he, who that he might buy a 

 country house near Florence, sold Livy, which he had writ in a very 

 fair hand ; or I, who to purchase Livy have exposed a piece of land to 

 sale ? * 



It is doubtless a good thing to be worth a million of dollars, although 

 1 confess I never tried the experiment, but there are some things bet- 

 ter than money. I would rather have the capacity and inclination to 

 converse with Shakespeare and Dante, for example, than to have a 

 million of dollars ; and in looking forward to the occupations of the 

 future life, I would rather fit myself to commune with such souls than 

 with Croesus and Midas. He was one of the wisest of mankind who 

 said the only earthly immortality is in writing a book. 



A miser having died, one said to the dead man's lawyer, "So old 

 so-and-so is dead ? Did he leave m uch ? " " Oh, yes," was the remy, 

 " He left every thing,— didn't take any thing with him." 



I would like to take something with me. 



It remains to add a few practical hints on the collecting and adorn- 

 ment of books. Usefulness in some sense ought always to be at the 



