swaggering, obtrusive and infantile art, I seem to have learned the very spirit of my life's enjoyment; met there the shadows of the characters I was to read about and love in a late future; got the romance of _Der Freischuetz_ long ere I was to hear of Weber or the mighty Formes; acquired a gallery of scenes and characters with which, in the silent theatre of the brain, I might enact all novels and romances; and took from these rude cuts an enduring and transforming pleasure. Reader--and yourself? A word of moral: it appears that B. Pollock, late J. Redington, No. 73 Hoxton Street, not only publishes twenty-three of these old stage favourites, but owns the necessary plates and displays a modest readiness to issue other thirty-three. If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's or to Clarke's of Garrick Street. In Pollock's list of publicanda I perceive a pair of my ancient aspirations: _The Wreck Ashore_ and _Sixteen-String Jack_; and I cherish the belief that when these shall see once more the light of day, B. Pollock will remember this apologist. But, indeed, I have a dream at times that is not all a dream. I seem to myself to wander in a ghostly street--E.W., I think, the postal district--close below the fool's cap of St. Paul's, and yet within easy hearing of the echo of the Abbey Bridge. There in a dim shop, low in the roof and smelling strong of glue and footlights, I find myself in quaking treaty with great Skelt himself, the aboriginal, all dusty from the tomb. I buy, with what a choking heart--I buy them all, all but the pantomimes; I pay my mental money, and go forth; and lo! the packets are dust. XIV A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS'S The books that we re-read the oftenest are not always those that we admire the most; we choose and we revisit them for many and various reasons, as we choose and revisit human friends. One or two of Scott's novels, Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, "The Egoist," and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne," form the inner circle of my intimates. Behind these comes a good troop of dear acquaintances; "The Pilgrim's Progress" in the front rank, "The Bible in Spain" not far behind. There are besides a certain number that look at me with reproach as I pass them by on my shelves: books that I once thumbed and studied: houses which were once like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, Horace, Burns, and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is the class of book that has its hour of brilliancy--glows, sings, charms, and then fades again into insignificance until the fit return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on me by turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who, were they but "Their sometime selves the same throughout the year,"