closed, and having at the back the novelty of a covered passage, built of the same grey stone as the tower itself. This passage passed away into the wood at the back, whence was ascending a wreath of smoke which immediately recalled to him the dwelling of Circe.* Indeed, the change before him had much the air of enchantment; and the Circean similitude was not a little enhanced by the antique masonry,† and the expanse of sea which was visible from the eminence. He leaned over the gate, repeated aloud the lines of the Odyssey, and fell into a brown study, from

* Καὶ τότ ̓ ἐγὼν ἐμὸν ἔγχος ἑλὼν καὶ φάσγανον ὀξὺ
Καρπαλίμως παρὰ νηὸς ἀνήϊον ἐς περιωπὴν,
Εἴπως ἔργα ἴδοιμι βροτῶν ἐνοπήν τε πυθοίμην.
Εστην δὲ, σκοπιὴν ἐς παιπαλόεσσαν ἀνελθὼν,
Καὶ μοι ἐείσατο καπνὸς ἀπὸ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης,
Κίρκης ἐν μεγάροισι, διὰ δρυμὰ πυκνὰ καὶ ὕλην.
Μερμήριξα δ ̓ ἔπειτα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμὸν
Ἐλθεῖν, ἠδὲ πυθέσθαι, ἐπεὶ ἴδον αἴθοπα καπνόν.

Od. K. 145–162.

I climbed a cliff with spear and sword in hand,
Whose ridge o'erlooked a shady length of land:
To learn if aught of mortal works appear,
Or cheerful voice of mortal strike the ear.
From the high point I marked, in distant view,
A stream of curling smoke ascending blue,
And spiry tops, the tufted trees above,
Of Circe's palace bosomed in the grove.
Thither to haste, the region to explore,
Was first my thought

† Εὗρον δ ̓ ἐν βήσσῃσι τετυγμένα δώματα Κίρκης

Ξεστοίσιν λάεσσι, περισκέπτῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ.—Ib. 210, 211,

The palace in a woody vale they found,

High-raised of stone, a shaded space around.-POPE.

which he was aroused by the approach of a young gentleman from within the enclosure.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the Doctor, but my curiosity is excited by what I see here; and if you do not think it impertinent, and would inform me how these changes have come about, I should be greatly obliged.'

'Most willingly, sir,' said the other; but if you will walk in, and see what has been done, the obligation will be mine.'

The Doctor readily accepted the proposal. The stranger led the way, across an open space in the wood, to a circular hall, from each side of which a wide passage led, on the left hand to the tower, and on the right to the new building, which was so masked by the wood, as not to be visible except from within the glade. It was a square structure of plain stone, much in the same style as that of the tower.

The young gentleman took the left-hand pas

sage,

and introduced the Doctor to the lower floor of the tower.

'I have divided the tower,' he observed, 'into three rooms: one on each floor. This is the dining-room; above it is my bedroom; above it again is my library. The prospect is good from all the floors, but from the library it is most extensive, as you look over the woods far away into the open sea.'

'A noble dining-room,' said the Doctor. The

height is well proportioned to the diameter. That circular table well becomes the form of the room, and gives promise of a fine prospect in its way.'

'I hope you will favour me by forming a practical judgment on the point,' said his new acquaintance, as he led the way to the upper floor, the Doctor marvelling at the extreme courtesy with which he was treated. "This building, thought he, might belong to the age of chivalry, and my young host might be Sir Calidore himself.' But the library brought him back to other days.

The walls were covered with books, the upper portion accessible by a gallery, running entirely round the apartment. The books of the lower circle were all classical; those of the upper, English, Italian, and French, with a few volumes in Spanish.

The young gentleman took down a Homer, and pointed out to the Doctor the passage which, as he leaned over the gate, he had repeated from the Odyssey. This accounted to the Doctor for the deference shown to him. He saw at once into the Greek sympathy.

'You have a great collection of books,' said the Doctor.

'I believe,' said the young gentleman, ‘I have all the best books in the languages I cultivate. Horne Tooke says: "Greek, Latin, Italian, and

French, are unfortunately the usual bounds of an
English scholar's acquisition."
I think any

scholar fortunate whose acquisition extends so far. These languages and our own comprise, I believe, with a few rare exceptions, all the best books in the world. I may add Spanish, for the sake of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon. It was a dictum of Porson, that "Life is too short to learn German :" meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be acquired within the ordinary space of life, but that there is nothing in it to compensate for the portion of life bestowed on its acquirement, however little that may be.'*

The Doctor was somewhat puzzled what to say. He had some French and more Italian, being fond of romances of chivalry; and in Greek and Latin he thought himself a match for any man; but he was more occupied with speculations on the posi

* Mr. Hayward's French hotel-keeper in Germany had a different, but not less cogent reason for not learning German. 'Whenever a dish attracts attention by the art displayed in its conception or preparation, apart from the material, the artist will commonly be discovered to be French. Many years ago we had the curiosity to inquire, at the Hotel de France, at Dresden, to whom our party were indebted for the enjoyment they had derived from a suprême de volaille, and were informed the cook and the master of the hotel were one and the same person: a Frenchman, ci-devant chef of a Russian minister. He had been eighteen years in Germany, but knew not a word of any language but his "A quoi bon, messieurs," was his reply to our expression of astonishment; "à quoi bon, apprendre la langue d'un peuple qui ne possède pas une cuisine ?"—Art of Dining, pp. 69, 70.

own.

tion and character of his new acquaintance, than on the literary opinions he was enunciating. He marvelled to find a young man, rich enough to do what he here saw done, doing anything of the kind, and fitting up a library in a solitary tower, instead of passing his time in clubs and réunions, and other pursuits and pleasures of general society. But he thought it necessary to say something to the point, and rejoined:

'Porson was a great man, and his dictum would have weighed with me if I had had a velleity towards German; but I never had any. But I rather wonder you should have placed your library on the upper instead of the middle floor. The prospect, as you have observed, is fine from all the floors; but here you have the sea and the sky to the greatest advantage; and I would assign my best look-out to the hours of dressing and undressing; the first thing in the morning, the last at night, and the half-hour before dinner. You can give greater attention to the views before you, when you are following operations, important certainly, but mechanical from repetition, and uninteresting in themselves, than when you are engaged in some absorbing study, which probably shuts out all perception of the external world.'

What you say is very true, sir,' said the other; 'but you know the lines of Milton