The one sad sight at an English railway book-stall is the little array of solid writers who stand neglected, shabby, and apart, pleading dumbly out of their dusty shame for recognition and release. I have seen Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest” jostled contemptuously into a corner. I have seen “The Apostolic Fathers” hanging their hoary heads with dignified humility, and “The Popes of Rome” lingering in inglorious bondage. I have seen our own Emerson broken-backed and spiritless; and, harder still, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” shorn of his gay supremacy, frayed, and worn, and exiled from his friends. I have seen “Sartor Resartus” skulking on a dark shelf with a yellow-covered neighbor more gaudy than respectable, and I have seen Buckle’s boasted “Civilization” in a condition that would have disgraced a savage. These Titans, discrowned and discredited, these captives, honorable in their rags, stirred my heart with sympathy and compassion. I wanted to gather them up and carry them away to respectability, and the long-forgotten shelter of library walls. But light-weight luggage precluded philanthropy, and, steeling my reluctant soul, I left them to their fate. Still they stand, I know, unsought, neglected, scorned, while thousands of “Dorothys” and “Ally Slopers” are daily sold around them. “How had the star of this daughter of Gomer waxed, while the star of these Cymry, his sons, had waned!” How shall genius be revered and honored, when buried without decent rites in the bleak graveyard of a railway book-stall? Transcriber’s Notes Simple typographical errors were corrected. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Points of View, by Agnes Repplier