I taste, in slow alternate way, Letters of _Lamb_, letters of _Gray_: Nor lives there, beneath Oxford towers, More joy, than in my silent hours. Dream, who love dreams! forget all grief: Find, in sleep's nothingness, relief: Better my dreams! Dear, human books, With kindly voices, winning looks! Enchaunt me with your spells of art, And draw me homeward to your heart: Till weariness and things unkind Seem but a vain and passing wind: Till the grey morning slowly creep Upward, and rouse the birds from sleep: Till _Oxford_ bells the silence break, And find me happier, for your sake. Then, with the dawn of common day, Rest you! But I, upon my way, What the fates bring, will cheerlier do, In days not yours, through thoughts of you! L. JOHNSON. ON THE LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE In that great maze of books I sighed, and said,-- 'It is a grave-yard, and each tome a tomb; Shrouded in hempen rags, behold the dead, Coffined and ranged in crypts of dismal gloom,-- Food for the worm and redolent of mould, Traced with brief epitaph in tarnished gold.'-- Ah, golden-lettered hope!--Ah, dolorous doom! Yet, mid the common death, when all is cold, And mildewed pride in desolation dwells, A few great Immortalities of old Stand brightly forth;--not tombs but living shrines, Where from high saint or martyr virtue wells, Which on the living yet works miracles, Spreading a relic wealth, richer than golden mines. J. M. THE SOUL'S VIATICUM Books looked on as to their readers or authors do at the very first mention challenge pre-eminence above the world's admired fine things. Books are the glass of council to dress ourselves by. They are life's best business: vocation to these hath more emolument coming in than all the other busy terms of life. They are fee-less councillors, no delaying patrons, of easy access, and kind expedition, never sending away empty any client or petitioner. They are for company the best friends; in doubts, counsellors; in damp, comforters; Time's perspective; the home traveller's ship, or horse, the busy man's best recreation; the opiate of idle weariness; the mind's best ordinary; Nature's garden and seed-plot of Immortality. Time spent, needlessly, from them is consumed, but with them twice gained. Time captivated and snatched from thee by incursions of business, thefts of visitants, or by thy own carelessness lost, is by these redeemed in life; they are the soul's viaticum; and against death its cordial. In a true verdict, no such treasure as a library.--B. WHITELOCKE. NOTES PAGE 1. _Lamb._--The extracts from the works of Charles Lamb are from the Oxford edition, edited by T. Hutchinson. Not content with 'grace' before Milton and Shakespeare, Lamb suggests elsewhere (see p. 130) a solemn service.