I have some curious books in my library, a few of which I should like to say something about to The Teacups, when they have no more immediately pressing subjects before them.  A library of a few thousand volumes ought always to have some books in it which the owner almost never opens, yet with whose backs he is so well acquainted that he feels as if he knew something of their contents.  They are like those persons whom we meet in our daily walks, with whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter garments, whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, we feel acquainted, and yet whose names, whose business, whose residences, we know nothing about.  Some of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, so rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a considerable amount of courage to attack them.

I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a very thick, stout volume, bound in parchment, and standing on the lower shelf, next the fireplace.  The pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she were my librarian, and I don’t doubt she would have found it if I had given only the name on the back.

Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto in her arms.  It was a pleasing sight,—­the old book in the embrace of the fresh young damsel.  I felt, on looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of a girl who conducted us in the Temple, that ancient building in the heart of London.  The long-enduring monuments of the dead do so mock the fleeting presence of the living!

Is n’t this book enough to scare any of you?  I said, as Delilah dumped it down upon the table.  The teacups jumped from their saucers as it thumped on the board.  Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, Literarius, Philosophicus et Poeticus.  Lubecae MDCCXXXIII.  Perhaps I should not have ventured to ask you to look at this old volume, if it had not been for the fact that Dr. Johnson mentions Morohof as the author to whom he was specially indebted.—­more, I think, than to any other.  It is a grand old encyclopaedic summary of all the author knew about pretty nearly everything, full of curious interest, but so strangely mediaeval, so utterly antiquated in most departments of knowledge, that it is hard to believe the volume came from the press at a time when persons whom I well remember were living.  Is it possible that the books which have been for me what Morhof was for Dr. Johnson can look like that to the student of the year 1990?

Morhof was a believer in magic and the transmutation of metals.  There was always something fascinating to me in the old books of alchemy.  I have felt that the poetry of science lost its wings when the last powder of projection had been cast into the crucible, and the fire of the last transmutation furnace went out.  Perhaps I am wrong in implying that alchemy is an extinct folly.  It existed in New England’s early days, as we learn from the Winthrop papers, and I see no reason why gold-making should not have its votaries as well as other popular delusions.