blackened with age and stuffed with antique velours; against it, a great two-handed sword,--“such a blade as old Charles Martel might have wielded, when he drove the Saracen from France”; across that opening, an antique wooden window-lattice, with heavy shutters, taken from an English house built more than 700 years ago; beside it, a chair once used by England’s King Henry the Eighth; against this wall, a stone mantel brought from Italy, with a hearth made of tiles stolen by slaves from the Alhambra. In the walls are many odd nooks and hidden cupboards, which open by the release of secret springs,--in which, when illumined by small, concealed lamps, are revealed collections of jewelled rosaries; or of crucifixes wrought in ivory, ebony, and iron; or of specimens of the potter’s art; or of trinkets once worn or owned by members of the gentle Borgia Family. The stranger, wandering through this reclusive domain,--into which few strangers ever are permitted to penetrate,--opening low Gothic doors, will blunder into angular hutches or long, low tunnels filled with shelves and cases of rare pamphlets and old books; will pause with awe before a superb window of purple stained glass; or gaze with wonder on a massive globe suspended in a well over which a translucent canopy is so arranged that it takes and intensifies all the changing colors of the covering heavens; or will come with startled delight upon a grot in which a small fountain of crystal water flings its spray over a little pool half-filled with violets, sweetpeas, and full-blown roses. Belasco, unlike many other collectors, has an intimate personal knowledge of every article in his collection; can recall at once where, when, and how each was acquired; and, notwithstanding the number and seeming confusion of the different pieces, knows exactly where each one is placed and instantly perceives and vituperatively denounces any disarrangement of them such as occasionally is caused by members of that pestiferous sisterhood which plies the duster and the brush without sense of the sacredness of an antiquarian’s sweet disorder,--a sisterhood which has stirred up consternation and wrath since long before _Mr. Oldbuck’s_ time. His writing is done there among his treasured collections, now in one corner, now in another, upon a small, battered, baize-covered cutting-table, such as ladies use for sewing, which he carries about from place to place as the fancy suits him. And there, also, his principal recreation is found when, wearied by labor or oppressed by care, he turns to contemplation and enjoyment of the heaped-up beauty which he has gathered about him. IN THE MATTER OF STAGE LIGHTING.