cheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous
license can we taste the genuine joys of true perusal.

I suppose, my dear friend, that, when you were younger and foolisher
than you now are, you were wont, after the reading of some dismal
work upon diet and health, to take long, constitutional walks. You
"toddled"--pardon the vulgar word!--so many miles out and so many miles
in, at just such a pace, in just the prescribed time, during hours fixed
as the Fates; and you wondered, when you came home to your Graham bread
and cold water, that you did not bring an appetite with you. You had
performed incredible pedestrian achievements, and were not hungry, but
simply weary. It is of small use to try to be good with malice prepense.
Nature is nothing, if not natural. If I am to read to any purpose,
I must read with a relish, and browse at will with the bridle off.
Sometimes I go into a library, the slow accretion of a couple of
centuries, or perhaps the mushroom growth from a rich man's grave, a
great collection magically convoked by the talisman of gold. At the
threshold, as I ardently enter, the flaming sword of regulation is
waving. Between me and the inviting shelves are fences of woven iron;
the bibliographic Cerberus is at his sentryship; when I want a full
draught, I must be content with driblets; and the impatient messengers
are sworn to bring me only a single volume at a time. To read in such a
hampered and limited way is not to read at all; and I go back, after
the first fret and worry are over, to the little collection upon my
garret-shelf, to greet again the old familiar pages. I leave the main
army behind,--"the lordly band of mighty folios," "the well-ordered
ranks of the quartos," "the light octavos," and "humbler duodecimos,"
for

"The last new play, and frittered magazine,"--

for the sutlers and camp-followers, "pioneers and all," of the
grand army,--for the prizes, dirty, but curious, rescued from the
street-stall, or unearthed in a Nassau-Street cellar,--for the books
which I thumbed and dogs-eared in my youth.

I have, in my collection, a little Divinity, consisting mostly of quaint
Quaker books bequeathed to me by my grandmother,--a little Philosophy, a
little Physic, a little Law, a little History, a little Fiction, and a
deal of Nondescript stuff. Once, when the _res angusta domi_ had become
_angustissima_, a child of Israel was, in my sore estate, summoned to
inspect the dear, shabb