I scarcely know a greater pleasure than to be allowed for a whole day to spend the hours unmolested in my friend's library. So much _privilege_ abounds there, I call it _Urbanity Hall_. It is a plain, modestly appointed apartment, overlooking a broad sheet of water; and I can see, from where I like to sit and read, the sail-boats go tilting by, and glancing across the bay. Sometimes, when a rainy day sets in, I run down to my friend's house, and ask leave to browse about the library,--not so much for the sake of reading, as for the intense enjoyment I have in turning over the books that have a personal history as it were. Many of them once belonged to authors whose libraries have been dispersed. My friend has enriched her editions with autographic notes of those fine spirits who wrote the books which illumine her shelves, so that one is constantly coming upon some fresh treasure in the way of a literary curiosity. I am apt to discover something new every time I take down a folio or a miniature volume. As I ramble on from shelf to shelf, "Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures," and the hours often slip by into the afternoon, and glide noiselessly into twilight, before dinner-time is remembered. Drifting about only a few days ago, I came by accident upon a magic quarto, shabby enough in its exterior, with one of the covers hanging by the eyelids, and otherwise sadly battered, to the great disfigurement of its external aspect. I did not remember even to have seen it in the library before, (it turned out to be a new comer,) and was about to pass it by with an unkind thought as to its pauper condition, when it occurred to me, as the lettering was obliterated from the back, I might as well open to the title-page and learn the name at least of the tattered stranger. And I was amply rewarded for the attention. It turned out to be "The Novels and Tales of the Renowned John Boccacio, The first Refiner of Italian Prose: containing A Hundred Curious Novels, by Seven Honorable Ladies and Three Noble Gentlemen, Framed in Ten Days." It was printed in London in 1684, "for Awnsham Churchill, at the Black Swan at Amen Corner." But what makes this old yellow-leaved book a treasure-volume for all time is the inscription on the first fly-leaf, in the handwriting of a man of genius, who, many years ago, wrote thus on the blank page: "To MARIANNE HUNT. "Her Boccacio (_alter et idem_) come back to her after many years' absence, for her good-nature in giving it away in a foreign country to a traveller whose want of books was still worse than her own. "From her affectionate husband, "LEIGH HUNT. "August 23,1839--Chelsea, England." This record tells a most interesting story, and reveals to us an episode in the life of the poet, well worth the knowing. I hope no accident will ever cancel this old leather-bound veteran from the world's bibliographic treasures. Spare it, Fire, Water, and Worms! for it does the heart good to handle such a quarto.