Far be it for me to despise the relic-mongers of literature, or to condemn them, except when they bring to light things which ought to have been buried with the dead; like the Dumfries craniologists, who, when the grave of Burns was opened to receive the corpse of his wife, took that opportunity of _abstracting_ the poet's skull that they might make a cast from it! Had these men forgotten the malediction which Shakespeare utters from his monument? And had they never read what Wordsworth says to such men in his Poet's epitaph— Art thou one all eyes, Philosopher! a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave? Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece, O turn aside,—and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy pin-point of a soul away! O for an hour of Burns' for these men's sake! Were there a Witch of Endor in Scotland it would be an act of comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit; to stigmatize them in verses that would burn for ever would be a gratification for which he might think it worth while to be thus brought again upon earth. But to the harmless relic-mongers we owe much; much to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the Isaac Reids and the Malones, the Haslewoods and Sir Egertons. Individually, I owe them much, and willingly take this opportunity of acknowledging the obligation. And let no one suppose that Sir Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed among the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement for any man of letters, however great his endowments, and however extensive his erudition, to take part in those patient and humble labours by which honour is rendered to his predecessors, and information preserved for those who come after him. But in every original work which lives and deserves to live there must have been some charms which no editorial diligence can preserve, no critical sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters, suffer much when removed from the places for which, (and in which, many of them,) they were painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-Master-General in Napoleon's armies, and have past from thence,—honestly as regards the purchaser,—to the hands of an English owner, may be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a different character; the air and odour of the place are different. There is not here the locality that consecrated it,—no longer the _religio loci_. Wealth cannot purchase these; power may violate and destroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, by those who have any true feeling for such things.