the walls are many that I love, but here in the centre of the room, and
easiest to get at, are those I love the _best_--the very elect among my
favourites. They change from time to time as I get older, and with years
some that are in the bookcases come here, and some that are here go into
the bookcases, and some again are removed altogether, and are placed on
certain shelves in the drawing-room which are reserved for those that
have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and from whence they
seldom, if ever, return. Carlyle used to be among the elect. That was
years ago, when my hair was very long, and my skirts very short, and I
sat in the paternal groves with _Sartor Resartus_, and felt full of
wisdom and _Weltschmerz_; and even after I was married, when we lived in
town, and the noise of his thunderings was almost drowned by the rattle
of droschkies over the stones in the street below, he still shone forth a
bright, particular star. Now, whether it is age creeping upon me, or
whether it is that the country is very still and sound carries, or
whether my ears have grown sensitive, I know not; but the moment I open
him there rushes out such a clatter of denunciation, and vehemence, and
wrath, that I am completely deafened; and as I easily get bewildered, and
love peace, and my chief aim is to follow the apostle's advice and study
to be quiet, he has been degraded from his high position round the pillar
and has gone into retirement against the wall, where the accident of
alphabet causes him to rest in the soothing society of one Carina, a
harmless gentleman, whose book on the _Bagni di Lucca_ is on his left,
and a Frenchman of the name of Charlemagne, whose soporific comedy
written at the beginning of the century and called _Le Testament de
l'Oncle_, _ou Les Lunettes Cassees_, is next to him on his right. Two
works of his still remain, however, among the elect, though differing in
glory--his _Frederick the Great_, fascinating for obvious reasons to the
patriotic German mind, and his _Life of Sterling_, a quiet book on the
whole, a record of an uneventful life, in which the natural