oks, the
tawny browns and blues of the Persian carpet, and the scarlet splendours
of the courtier over the mantelpiece. The room was lit up besides by a
few gleaming casts from the antique, by the 'Diane Chasseresse' of the
Louvre, by the Hermes of Praxiteles smiling with immortal kindness on
the child enthroned upon his arm, and by a Donatello figure of a woman
in marble, its subtle sweet austerity contrasting with the Greek
frankness and blitheness of its companions.

Langham was penetrated at once by the spell of this strange and
beautiful place. The fastidious instincts which had been half revolted
by the costly accumulations, the overblown splendours of the
drawing-room, were abundantly satisfied here.

'So it was here,' he said, looking round him, 'that that man wrote _The
Idols of the Market-place_?'

'I imagine so,' said Robert; 'if so, he might well have felt a little
more charity towards the human race in writing it. The race cannot be
said to have treated him badly on the whole. But now look, Langham, look
at these books--the most precious things are here.'

And he turned the key of a particular section of the wall, which was
not only latticed but glazed.

'Here is _A Mirror for Magistrates_. Look at the title-page; you will
find Gabriel Harvey's name on it. Here is a first edition of _Astrophel
and Stella_, another of the Arcadia. They may very well be presentation
copies, for the Wendover of that day is known to have been a wit and a
writer. Imagine finding them _in situ_ like this in the same room,
perhaps on the same shelves, as at the beginning! The other rooms on
this floor have been annexed since, but this room was always a library.'

Langham took the volumes reverently from Robert's hands into his own,
the scholar's passion hot within him. That glazed case was indeed a
storehouse of treasures. Ben Jonson's _Underwoods_ with his own
corrections; a presentation copy of Andrew Marvell's _Poems_, with
autograph notes; manuscript volumes of letters, containing almost every
famous name known to English literature in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the literary cream, in fact, of all the vast
collection which filled the muniment room upstairs; books which had
belonged to Addison, to Sir William Temple, to Swift, to Horace Walpole;
the first four folios of Shakespeare, all perfect, and most of the
quartos--everything that the heart of the English collector could most
desire was there. And the