secret, it lay on my lady’s table.  She killed the weary day with it, and when night came it was placed beneath her pillow.  At the sea-side a couple of foolish heads have bent over it, hands have touched and tingled, and it has heard vows and protestations as passionate as any its pages contained.  Coming down in the world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over it by the light of a surreptitious candle, conceiving herself the while the magnificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana’s lover, the pot-boy round the corner.  Tied up with many a dingy brother, the auctioneer knocks the bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it finds its way to the quiet cove of some village library, where with some difficulty—­as if from want of teeth—­and with numerous interruptions—­as if from lack of memory—­it tells its old stories, and wakes tears, and blushes, and laughter as of yore.  Thus it spends its age, and in a few years it will become unintelligible, and then, in the dust-bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, it will rest from all its labours.  It is impossible to estimate the benefit which such books have conferred.  How often have they loosed the chain of circumstances!  What unfamiliar tears—­what unfamiliar laughter they have caused!  What chivalry and tenderness they have infused into rustic lovers!  Of what weary hours they have cheated and beguiled their readers!  The big, solemn history-books are in excellent preservation; the story-books are defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows condition is their pride, and the best justification of their existence.

In this pleasant summer weather I hold my audience in my garden rather than in my house.  In all my interviews the sun is a third party.  Every village has its Fool, and of course Dreamthorp is not without one.  Him I get to run my messages for me, and he occasionally turns my garden borders with a neat hand enough.  He and I hold frequent converse, and people here, I have been told, think we have certain points of sympathy.  Although this is not meant for a compliment, I take it for one.  The poor, faithful creature’s brain has strange visitors:  now ’tis fun, now wisdom, and now something which seems in the queerest way a compound of both.  He lives in a kind of twilight which observes objects, and his remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary people live.  He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those generally accepted.  He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of Shakespeare’s plays into this out-of-the-way place.  Up from the village now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons.  Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the only martyr in his calendar.  The sourest-tempered man, I think, that ever engaged