round people, and three-cornered people; and two kinds
of holes,--round holes, and three-cornered holes. All mysterious
providences, misfortunes, dispensations, evils, and wrong things
generally, are attributable to this cause, namely, that round people
get into three-cornered holes, and three-cornered people get into
round holes." The librarian is not only a three-cornered person, but a
many-cornered one,--a human polyhedron. And he is in his right place,--a
many-cornered man in a many-cornered hole; especially if the hole be
like that which I am thinking of,--an Historical Library.

The only bibliothecarian peculiarity in point at present is, a gift
to root up, (country boys, speaking of pigs, say _rootle_; it is more
onomatopoeian,) to rootle up the most obscure and useless pieces of
information; not, like Mr. Nadgett, to work them into a chain of
connected evidence for some actual purpose, but merely to know them, to
possess a record of them, either as found in some printed or manuscript
document, or as recorded by the librarian himself; and to keep the
record pickled away in some place where it will be as little likely as
possible to be found or read by anybody else.

So much concerning Librarians; a word now about Character.

Bad blood is hereditary. I don't mean scrofulous, but wicked blood.
Vicious tendencies pass down in a family, appearing in the most various
manifestations, until at last the evil of the race works its only
possible remedy, by resulting in its extinction. There is, in some
sense, an absolute unity amongst the successive generations of those of
one blood; at least, so much so that our feeling of poetical justice is
rather gratified than otherwise when the crimes of one are avenged, it
may be a century after, upon the person of another of the name. This was
the truth which underlay the vast gloomy fables of the ancient Fates,
and the stories of the inevitable destruction of the great ancient
houses of Greece. It is the same which the Indian feels when he revenges
upon one of the white race the wrongs inflicted by another. Succession
in time does not interfere with the stern promise of Jehovah to visit
the sins of the fathers upon the children.--The reader will see
presently how I have been led into this train of reflection.

My predecessor in office had a strong fancy for Numismatology. I have,
too; nobody would more enjoy a vast collection of coins; but, oddly
enough, I should prefer contemp