By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and
fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a
profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.
I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in
parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a
venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled
by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a
train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their
mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves, and apparently never
disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind
of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously
entombed, and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.
How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside
with such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days!
how many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in
the solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the
face of man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted
themselves to painful research and intense reflection! And all for
what? to occupy an inch of dusty shelf- to have the title of their
works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or
casual straggler like myself; and in another age to be lost, even to
remembrance.
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