with some he exchanges a few words; others he just nods to, and to some perhaps he may give the cut direct; but he knows them all in some way or other. As the review of a fine army to an old general, so is a fine library to a true student. He loves to see his levy _en masse_, and in detail. The sight of them cheers his spirits, elevates his mind, and--mark this, gentle reader--gives him the idea of power. There lies a great secret, which in these costermonger days we deserve great credit for communicating to the world free-gratis for nothing. Knowledge is power--that’s our major; there one stands in the midst of a noble army of books--that’s our minor, or lieutenant; then a man feels strong, and vastly well pleased with himself--and that is our fife and drum, or conclusion, by every law of drill or logic. In our juvenile days, before we were A-B-C’d, and therefore before we enjoyed the privilege of free ingress and egress at the superb Old Trinity, we used to pass whole days of rumination in the quiet pastures of Marsh’s. This library, situate in an antique building to one side of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, is graciously open to the public in general, and to all under-graduates of the University in particular, and wears a secluded, cloistered, antiquated air about it, that invites to contemplation. You are there on classic ground. The genius of Swift seems to hover o’er you. You fancy yourself with an age that has passed away, and among spirits that have long since winged their flight from earth. Many a summer’s day have we mused and read, and read and mused, in its delightful solitude, without any other interruption save the cackling of hens and crowing of cocks in some of the neighbouring yards, the playing or screaming of children in Kevin-street or Mitre-alley, the scolding of women in some of the adjoining houses, or a few words of conversational politeness interchanged between us and the Rev. Mr Cradoe, the librarian, chiefly on the news of the morning.