At ten o'clock on this night, Dr. Pye was employed looking over a number of manuscripts, setting some aside and burning others, keeping a jealous eye upon the fire as he watched them moulder to ashes. Upon the table were a bottle of wine and two glass goblets of ancient manufacture and design. There were quaint stems to these goblets, one representing a serpent, the other a satyr, whose upraised face seemed to be trying to reach the rim. Priceless treasures of the antique. That the wine was precious, and that Dr. Pye so considered it, was evidenced by the disposition of the bottle, which lay in a basket lined with thick blue felt; the glasses were Venetian. These and the wine were in harmony with the taste displayed in the gathering together the costly and unique collection of articles which adorned the room. One might have expected to see such an apartment in an old palace, for the beautifying of which centuries of treasure had been collected through many generations, but scarcely in a street in Islington where wealth was not abundant, and where the residents, for the most part, were toilers of the humblest kind. Secluded as was the room--its door closed, its one window so closely shuttered that not a chink of light could be discerned from without--the hum of crowded life from the outer street penetrated it and droned like an exhausted bee. Dr. Pye listened, smiled contemptuously, and gazed around upon the precious bronzes and ivories, the rare _bric-à-brac_, the exquisite enamels, the books with jewelled bindings, which were so arranged that their beauties were seen at a glance. Not one of these examples was of the new school of art; all belonged to times when form and colour were either better understood and valued than now, or received from the artist that whole-souled and loving labour which in this age of hurry-scurry no artist dreams of bestowing upon his work--and thus misses perfection and immortality. In the world of art to-day it is the merchant-author who displays his wares and touts for patronage.