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 Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe’ presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Récamier, 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 soul put an end to himself twenty years ago.’ ‘What in the name of fortune did he do that for?’ ‘Mania,’ said Robert quietly. ‘Whew!’ said the other, lifting his eyebrows. ‘Is that the skeleton in this very magnificent cupboard?’