maintained, and his children fitted for the best stations in life; his wife's sisters or sisters' children taken to his hearth and home ;-all this accomplished by the labors of his patient pen, and an honorable independence free from debt ever scrupulously preserved--show him a man fulfilling not only the strict duties, but the noblest charities of domestic life. I declare to you, my dear wife, if God spares my life and health, I should like to write a sketch of the life and writings, the genius, and character of Robert Southey."

"I hope you will do it, husband," said Mrs. Oldham, "it is a beautiful subject, and besides you knew him so well, and he was so kind to you when you were at school in England."

"Ah, if Irving would only give me the pen with which he wrote his charming life of Goldsmith," said the Doctor in reply.

"Why, husband, your pen is good enough: you can do it as well as Mr. Irving, I am sure."

66 That is the delusion of an affectionate wife," replied the Doctor; "but it does credit to your heart, my dear.”

CHAPTER V.

GREYSTONES: AND WHAT DOWNING MIGHT HAVE SAID
HAD THE ALTERING OF THE PLAN OF IT.

IF HE HAD

I THINK we are backing up to the proper startingplace. I begin to have hope we shall, before many chapters, be able to get on in a way more satisfactory to the lovers of regular proceedings. We have gone from the library table to the library. A library (a private library at least, such as the Doctor's) presumes a house of which the library forms a part; that is, if you understand by the word library what I mean, a book-room namely, and not a mere collection of books. The Arabs have fifty words to designate the lion. We have fifty meanings to some single words. I do not object to this. But I think it a grievance that we have not one word exclusively appropriated to denote such an agreeable thing as a comfortable, cheerful room, where one can find good books in plenty, and a

plenty of all needful appliances for reading them at

ease.

We have now our library: I mean, you and I, courteous reader, have now the Doctor's library— not implicite, as before, but explicite-no longer as a thing presumed, but a thing set forth. I hope you like it.

But, as I said, the library presumes a house; the house a locality, and some determinate architectural form and fashion-outside looks and inside dispositions; also, environs, prospects, and such like things; and, in fine, also inmates or a family. All these things must be reached by arriving backward in some way, which I am resolved to do in the shortest, that is, the straightest way I may find ability to do it in.

The curious reader is doubtless eager to get at these things. But if he be at the same time an observant and discriminating one, he will notice that the promise is made in such wise only as an honest man, conscious of his peculiar infirmities, will ever make a promise to go straight: it is made with a qualification. I never drink any thing but water, and might safely promise in the most absolute way to keep to the narrowest straight line of literal foot-going ever marked out in space; but as

to going a straight line in writing-whether straight forward (which is the natural and proper way), or straight backwards (which is the only right way in this case)-I am so well aware of my propensity to go zig-zaging along to the right and the left, and of the feebleness of my will to resist any temptation that may lure me astray, that I never make any such promise without the reservation proper to one who knows it is an even chance his firmest resolutions may be of no effect. Let us hope for the best. The resolution is an honest one.

The judicious reader will already have noted and put together a number of intimations in the foregoing chapters on all the matters in question; so that I shall only have to fill up what is meagre and to supply what is deficient.

The judicious reader already knows that the Doctor's house is a cottage, and called Greystones. The name was his daughter Lilly's giving. She has a fancy for bestowing pretty and appropriate names upon every thing. She chose this, however, not because she thought it as pretty as some others, but because it was the most appropriate one she could think of. For the house is a low, irregular cottage, of rough-dressed, dark grey stone-the walls covered with ivy, and the pillars

of the rustic verandas twined with honeysuckle and other flowering creepers. It is nestled down in a little sheltered nook on the Hudson, a little south of the old Dutch town near which it lies-so near indeed that the Post-office, the churches, and shops, are all within ten minutes' walk. Yet it is shut out from the view of the town by one of two small hills, which look as though they were once only one single hill, in shape like an inverted bowl, that had been split down in the middle and shoved apart, so as to form a little triangular valley with a wide opening towards the river, while at the apex or smallest end the faces of the split hill come so near together as to leave only an opening for a road into the tiny valley. The faces of these twin hills are almost perpendicular crags, with a few small cedars, dogwood, and other shrubs and wild-vines growing out of the seams and fissures of the rocks. The other sides are gentle acclivities clothed with cedars of some size.

At the narrow end of this secluded little hollow, on the right hand as you enter it by the road between the hills, near the face and under the shelter of the one that looks to the south-west, stands the cottage. The little hollow is, however, high up