f Middleburgh,
with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees.
This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the
gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by
a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen,
marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of
fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of
children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles,
whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like.
In one corner the children are busy with blind man's buff;
in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and
vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump
some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to
be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun,
two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their
heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement,
and--so conservative is childhood--might, but for the costume
and scene, represent a playground of to-day."

"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like islands, among my dull
pages. And there shall be other pages, to be found for the looking. . . .
I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a
story of Hans Andersen's which fascinated the pair of us in childhood,
when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown
wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the
Butterman's. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a
book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night
the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the
garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of
light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches
over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every
flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches.
Well, there shall be even such pages in my book."

"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, I begin to tire of the
future indicative, which (allow me to repeat) you first employed in this
discussion."

"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. "And if I did, 'tis a
trick of the trade. You of all people ought to know that I write
romances."

I do not at all demur to having the value of my books e