Oh For A Tongue To Curse The

There Is Absolutely No Such Thing As Reading But By A Candle. We Have Tried The Affectation Of A Book At Noon-day In Gardens, And In Sultry Arbours, But It Was Labor Thrown Away. Those Gay Motes In The Beam Come About You, Hovering And Teasing, Like So Many Coquets, That Will Have You All To Their Self, And Are Jealous Of Your Abstractions. By The Midnight Taper, The Writers Digests His Meditations. By The Same Light We Must Approach To Their Perusal, If We Would Catch The Flame, The Odour.

We Were Happier When We Were Poorer, But We Were Also Younger.

What A Place To Be In Is An Old Library! It Seems As Though All The Souls Of All The Writers That Have Bequeathed Their Labours To These Bodleians Were Reposing Here As In Some Dormitory, Or Middle State. I Do Not Want To Handle, To Profane The Leaves, Their Winding-sheets. I Could As Soon Dislodge A Shade. I Seem To Inhale Learning, Walking Amid Their Foliage; And The Odor Of Their Old Moth-scented Coverings Is Fragrant As The First Bloom Of The Sciential Apples Which Grew Amid The Happy Orchard.

I Own That I Am Disposed To Say Grace Upon Twenty Other Occasions In The Course Of The Day Besides My Dinner. I Want A Form For Setting Out Upon A Pleasant Walk, For A Moonlight Ramble, For A Friendly Meeting, Or A Solved Problem. Why Have We None For Books, These Spiritual Repasts-a Grace Before Milton-a Grace Before Shakespeare-a Devotional Exercise Proper To Be Said Before Reading The Fairie Queene?

If There Be A Regal Solitude, It Is A Sick-bed. How The Patient Lords It There!