utmost courtesy to the amusement of his guests, —­opened for them dusty cases of butterflies, shells, and rare stones, which he had collected in his pursuit of the various sciences that made them a specialty,—­placed ponderous tomes open at some curious or amusing story of otherwise forgotten ages, to arrest the fancy of elegant literati,—­exhibited rare and grotesque curiosities, the glittering mica that he had picked up in his long researches, as toys for these idlers of taste.

The flashing gems and gay dresses of the brilliant assemblage illuminated the dusky old study; the rustling of silks, and the merry laughter, only a trifle subdued by the novelty of the circumstances, the eager chattering, the tripping sound of girlish feet darting in and out of every quaint nook and corner, the varied flow of sprightly conversation, scared the solemn quiet of the library.  Looming down grimly from the shelves that lined the walls, stood ponderous volumes, monuments over the graves in which their authors were buried.  Oh, the life’s blood that had been wrung into those forgotten pages!  Oh, the eager hope and sickening disappointment, the vehement aspirations, the intense longings, the bitter hatred, the scorn, the greater than angelic, the human love and benevolence, the fortitude, the courage, the whole strange life of hundreds of dead men, that burned between those thick covers!  Often books do not reveal their authors until many years after their death.  They are read at first for the mite of fuel that they bring to some blazing controversy; the man is entirely forgotten in his work.  But when years, centuries, have passed away, and the fire that threatened to consume the world has died out as quietly as any common bonfire, then the “spirits of the mighty dead” come back calmly to their world-work,—­now doubtless seeing its little worth as clearly as their modern critics, but also hallowing their mighty labors with regal authority, as the living garment of a human soul.  The marble tombs in graveyards hold empty dust; the real men lie buried alive in quiet libraries.

The philosopher entertained his guests well.  But underneath all the polite suavity of his manner could be detected a curious satisfaction at the contrast between the deep sea of still thought usually embosoming his library, and this sparkling, shallow little stream now flowing into it.  The prominent popular tricks of science he played off for their amusement, exhibited the standard stars, enlarged upon the most wonder-striking and easily understood facts in the sublime science, and bewildered them with a pleasant enthusiasm of acquisition, by a series of brilliant chemical experiments.  The labors of a lifetime were concentrated on a few dazzling results:  the long tedium of the means, the painful training, the hard mathematical preparation, the brain-sickness and heart-sickness of these years of solitude were quietly ignored.