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He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered, and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to feel as if perhaps they were true.
Hardly a trace of masonry on the lower stories; nothing but plate glass the windows of book-shops, music shops, cafés, restaurants, jewelry stores, haberdasheries, expensive tailoring establishments. At one end, the Duomo, bristling with a forest of statues and perforated spires; at the other, the monument to Leonardo da Vinci, and the famous Teatro de la Scala!
For one month now Amedee Violette's volume of verses, entitled Poems from Nature, had embellished with its pale-blue covers the shelves of the book-shops. The commotion raised by the book's success, and the favorable criticisms given by the journals, had not yet calmed down at the Cafe de Seville. This emotion, let it be understood, did not exist except among the literary men.
To my large collection of books on the subject, made mainly in Italy, I added much from the old book-shops of Germany, and with these revised my Venetian studies. An old dream of mine had been to bring out a small book on Fra Paolo: now I sought, more modestly, to prepare an essay. The work was good for me.
"This, sir, is unique, but not so unique as the other." Buying books by actual inspection at the book-shops is even more fascinating employment than buying them through catalogues. You thus come upon the most unexpected volumes unawares. You open the covers, scan the title-pages, get a glimpse of the plates, and flit from book to book, like a bee gathering honey for its hive.
The peasant folk regarded it with foreboding; and I remember seeing in the book-shops of Rome, before we left, pamphlets in both Italian and English, with such titles as "Will the great comet, now rapidly approaching, strike the earth?"
The very fact of his great facility in acquiring knowledge must have been a drawback to him at school where time on his hands was, for lack of better material, frequently spent in reading all the foolish romances he could lay hold of in the neighbouring book-shops. His own early romances showed the influence of this bad literature.
At a little distance, the profile of Cambridge is almost precisely like that of Oxford, while glorious King's College Chapel makes up all deficiencies in the architectural features and outline of Cambridge. Starting from Bull Inn, we will not linger long in the streets, tho we might be tempted to do so by the luxurious book-shops, but will make straight for the gateway of Trinity College.
He found an ample supply of theological books in the city book-shops, and with these his studies were recommenced in a different spirit and direction from his former course. As a relaxation from the Fathers, and such stock works as Paley and Butler, he read Newman, Pusey, and many other modern lights. He hired a harmonium, set it up in his lodging, and practised chants thereon, single and double.
I have ever found the book auctioneers most courteous and considerate in their dealings and the same can be said of the book trade generally, among whom instances of liberality to libraries are by no means rare. One of the choicest pleasures of the book collector, whether private student or librarian, is to visit the second-hand book-shops of any city, and examine the stock with care.
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