oats. After your first two thousand difficulty
begins, but until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about
your library the better. _Then_ you may begin to speak.

It is no doubt a pleasant thing to have a library left you. The present
writer will disclaim no such legacy, but hereby undertakes to accept it,
however dusty. But good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to
collect one. Each volume then, however lightly a stranger's eye may roam
from shelf to shelf, has its own individuality, a history of its own. You
remember where you got it, and how much you gave for it; and your word
may safely be taken for the first of these facts, but not for the second.

The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate
himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.
No other man but he would have made precisely such a combination as his.
Had he been in any single respect different from what he is, his library,
as it exists, never would have existed. Therefore, surely he may
exclaim, as in the gloaming he contemplates the backs of his loved ones,
'They are mine, and I am theirs.'

But the eternal note of sadness will find its way even through the
keyhole of a library. You turn some familiar page, of Shakspeare it may
be, and his 'infinite variety,' his 'multitudinous mind,' suggests some
new thought, and as you are wondering over it you think of Lycidas, your
friend, and promise yourself the pleasure of having his opinion of your
discovery the very next time when by the fire you two 'help waste a
sullen day.' Or it is, perhaps, some quainter, tenderer fancy that
engages your solitary attention, something in Sir Philip Sydney or Henry
Vaughan, and then you turn to look for Phyllis, ever the best interpreter
of love, human or divine. Alas! the printed page grows hazy beneath a
filmy eye as you suddenly remember that Lycidas is dead--'dead ere his
prime'--and that the pale cheek of Phyllis will never again be relumined
by the white light of her pure enthusiasm. And then you fall to thinking
of the inevitable, and perhaps, in your present mood, not unwelcome hour,
when the 'ancient peace' of your old friends will be disturbed, when rude
hands will dislodge them from their accustomed nooks and break up their
goodly company.

'Death bursts amongst them like a shell,
And strews them over half the town.'

They will form new combinations, lighten other men's