If that severe doom of Synesius be true,--"It is a greater offeo steal dead mens labor, than their clothes,"--what shall bee of most writers?
BURTONS ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
I HAVE often wo the extreme fedity of the press, and how it es to pass that so many heads, on whiature seems to have in?icted the curse of barrenness, should teem with voluminous produs. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is tinually ?nding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I ced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a se whifolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft, and at o ao my astonishment.
I was one summers day l through the great saloons of the British Museum, with that listlessness with whie is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather; sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometimes studying the hieroglyphi aian mummy, and some times trying, with nearly equal success, to prehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. Whilst I was gazing about in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant door, at the end of a suite of apartments. It was closed, but every now and then it would open, and some strange-favored being, generally clothed in black, would steal forth, and glide through the rooms, without notig any of the surrounding objects. There was an air of mystery about this that piqued my languid curiosity, and I determio attempt the passage of that strait, and to explore the unknions beyond. The door yielded to my hand, with all that facility with which the portals of ented castles yield to the adventurous knight-errant. I found myself in a spacious chamber, surrounded with great cases of venerable books. Above the cases, and just uhe ice, were arranged a great number of black-looking portraits of a authors. About the room were placed long tables, with stands for reading and writing, at which sat many pale, studious personages, p ily over dusty volumes, rummaging among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of their tents. A hushed stillness reighrough this mysterious apartment, excepting that you might hear the rag of pens over sheets of paper, and occasionally the deep sigh of one of these sages, as he shifted his position to turhe page of an old folio; doubtless arising from that hollowness and ?atulent to learned research.
Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small slip of paper, and ring a bell, whereupon a familiar would appear, take the paper in profound silence, glide out of the room, aurn shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi, deeply engaged iudy of occult sces. The se reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher shut up in an ented library, in the bosom of a mountain, which opened only once a year; where he made the spirits of the place bring him books of all kinds of dark knowledge, so that at the end of the year, when the magic portal once more swung open on its hinges, he issued forth so versed in forbidden lore, as to be able to soar above the heads of the multitude, and to trol the powers of Nature.
My curiosity being now fully aroused, I whispered to one of the familiars, as he was about to leave the room, and begged an interpretation of the strange