world in their enthusiastic search after the buried lore of antiquity--men who have paled before the midnight lamp in their ceaseless efforts to penetrate the obscurity of the past--lonely eremites, who feed the lamps that cast their dim light on the votive offerings which antiquity has laid upon the altar of knowledge--men who have dwelt apart from their race and denied themselves the common pleasures of life, that they might without distraction restore the decaying temple of ancient literature, and recover for the use of their own and future generations, treasures which else had been buried and forgotten; who have lived in the past until they have imbibed its spirit, and return like travellers full of the wisdom of unknown lands, and rich with the accumulated experience of past ages to shower their treasures and their blessings upon the ungrateful many who despise them for their labors and taunt them for their gifts, that they too may learn what a thing it is to cast pearls before swine; and who, superior to the unmerited scorn of this world, and to all the temptations of its grovelling pleasures, meekly bear their ill treatment with no other emotion than the fear that the benefits thus painfully acquired and freely bestowed, may turn out to be coals of fire which they have been heaping upon unthankful heads. And are men who labor for such objects as these to be ridiculed as looking to things too small, because they sojourned so long in the gloom of past ages, that their optics have been enlarged to discern not only the mouldering monument, but the smallest eft that crawls upon it? Shall they be taunted because they have learned to live in mute companionship with their books, and like the lonely prisoner, love objects which to others may seem inconsiderable, but are endeared to them by all the force of a long association, whose chain is interwoven link by link with the memory of their past? And if, like Old Mortality, they love to restore each mouldering monument, and retrace every time-worn inscription that may serve to renew their silent communion with the hallowed and dreamy past, surely the occupation may be pardoned, if not for its uses to others, at least for the quiet affection and sweet enthusiasm of the dream which it serves to awaken in the mind which is busy in the employment. But the utilitarian spirit of the present age is ever ready to measure the value of these pursuits by that pecuniary standard which alone it uses. What are their fruits? Will they move spinning jennies or propel boats? are they known on 'Change? how do they stand in the prices current, and in what way will they put money in the purse? Strangely as this may sound in the ears of those who love knowledge for itself and its spiritual uses, and absurd as these things would have appeared to the literary world a century ago, we much fear that we must return answers to them satisfactory, in part, at least,