THE next time that I came over to Worth-Ashton it was raining, and I found my friends in the study. “Well, Dunsford,” said Ellesmere, “is it not comfortable to have our sessions here for once, and to be looking out on a good solid English wet day?” _Dunsford_. Rather a fluid than a solid. But I agree with you in thinking it is very comfortable here. _Ellesmere_. I like to look upon the backs of books. First I think how much of the owner’s inner life and character is shown in his books; then perhaps I wonder how he got such a book which seems so remote from all that I know of him— _Milverton_. I shall turn my books the wrong side upwards when you come into the study. _Ellesmere_. But what amuses me most is to see the odd way in which books get together, especially in the library of a man who reads his books and puts them up again wherever there is room. Now here is a charming party: “A Treatise on the Steam-Engine” between “Locke on Christianity” and Madame de Stael’s “Corinne.” I wonder what they talk about at night when we are all asleep. Here is another happy juxtaposition: old Clarendon next to a modern metaphysician whom he would positively loathe. Here is Sadler next to Malthus, and Horsley next to Priestley; but this sort of thing happens most in the best regulated libraries. It is a charming reflection for controversial writers, that their works will be put together on the same shelves, often between the same covers; and that, in the minds of educated men, the name of one writer will be sure to recall the name of the other. So they go down to posterity as a brotherhood. _Milverton_. To complete Ellesmere’s theory, we may say that all those injuries to books which we choose to throw upon some wretched worm, are but the wounds from rival books. _Ellesmere_. Certainly. But now let us proceed to polish up the weapons of another of these spiteful creatures. _Dunsford_. Yes. What is to be our essay to-day, Milverton? _Milverton_. Fiction. _Ellesmere_. Now, that is really unfortunate. Fiction is just the subject to be discussed—no, not discussed, talked over—out of doors on a hot day, all of us lying about in easy attitudes on the grass, Dunsford with his gaiters forming a most picturesque and prominent figure. But there is nothing complete in this life. “Surgit amari aliquid:” and so we must listen to Fiction in arm-chairs. FICTION.