y 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 "Astrophol
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 charm of it was that only a small proportion
of these precious things represented conscious and deliberate
acquisition. The great majority of them had, as it were, drifted thither
one by one, carried there by the tide of English letters as to a warm
and natural resting-place.

But Robert grew impatient, and hurried on his guest to other things--to
the shelves of French rarities, ranging from Du Bellay's 'Visions,'
with his autograph, down to the copy of 'Les Memoires d'Outre-Tombe'
presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Recamier, or to a dainty manuscript
volume in the fine writing of Lamartine.

'These,' Robert explained, 'were collected, I believe, by the Squire's
father. He was not in the least literary, so they say, but it had always
been a point of honor to carry on the library, and as he had learnt
French well in his youth he bought French things, taking advice,
but without knowing much about them, I imagine. It was in the room
overhead,' said Robert, laying down the book he held, and speaking in a
lower key, 'so the old doctor of the house told me a few weeks ago, that
the same poor sou