the bed, with the toe upwards, on retiring to rest. Herrick, again, in his "Hesperides," gives the following advice : Hang up hooks and shears to scare With the mire and the sweat ; This observed, the manes shall be Of your horses all knot-free. The mistletoe is a popular charm, and when hung over the bed is said to ward off the nightmare. Hence, in certain parts of Germany, one of the popular names for this plant is "marreutaken," ie. "mare-branches." Alluding to German superstitions on this point, we are told that a powerful remedy against the pressure of the nightmare is to cross the arms and legs before going to sleep. Thunderstones are also considered a good remedy, and some persons place them at their doors. A piece of German folk-lore further tells us that in the pines, branches are often found quite curled together, having almost the appearance of nests. When it rains, persons should be careful not to pass under such branches, for whoever is touched with a raindrop from one of these nests will, in the course of the night, be oppressed with the nightmare. Once more: In days gone it appears that there were numerous incantations addressed to saints, much used by the superstitious, an allusion to which we find in Cartwright's play of "The Ordinary" (act iii. sc. 1) : Saint Francis, and Saint Benedight, Fayries, weezels, rats, and ferrets, From Curfew time To the next prime. This was, no doubt, intended to be satirical-a parody on those which were genuine. Should, however, any of these charms or incantations fail in the desired effect, as a last resource the sign of the cross was generally considered efficacious. Lastly, according to a German idea which is not unknown in our own country, the nightmare creeps up the body of the sleeper. The weight is first felt on the feet, then on the stomach, and finally on the breast, when the sufferer, completely overpowered, can no longer move a limb. T. F. THISELTON DYER. 1 See Thorpe's Northern Mythology, iii. 154. 89 No THE LIBRARY. O room in the most gorgeous of houses, whose ceilings are` painted by Verrio and the furniture shaped by the skilful hands of Sheraton and Chippendale, is half so dear to the scholar as the library, albeit it may be given over to the moth and spider, and hung with the faded leather hangings of our grandsires. In the library he converses with his own kith and kin. It need not be a large room; perhaps in some respects it is better if small. When Socrates was asked why he had built himself so small a house, he replied, "Small as it is, I wish I could fill it with friends." But a library has generally an awkward fashion, after twenty years have somewhat dimmed its master's eye and left their snows on his hair, of requiring enlargement. Like an eastern monarch, it is apt to destroy its nearest neighbours as pretenders to the throne; so a passage is taken in, or a store-room added, and filled with shelves; and in another ten years perhaps, if its possessor be spared to see it, or, if not, should he leave a son blessed with his own tastes, there certainly comes a time when the groaning shelves, in spite of all devices of weeding out and transplanting their flowers of literature, must absolutely be removed elsewhere from a place which has become too strait for their contents. And then the book-lover is brought face to face with the question of a new library, and may please himself and incorporate into his design the newest theories of the Library Association. Happy he who can build his own library! His felicity is only augmented should he possess a large collection of rarities, chosen by himself, to place in it! The Greek Bobin, like our word library, possessed the double sense of a place where books were kept as well as the books themselves. The collections of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and Pisistratus (to whom we owe the codifying, so to speak, of Homer), were celebrated in the Greek world. It is curious to find that in Athens, during its palmy days, private persons, if votaries of the Muses, had their own libraries. Cicero, Lucullus, and the scholars of their age at Rome also prided themselves on their private libraries, and bibliomaniacs existed in sufficient numbers for Seneca to satirise them in the later days of the republic. These bibliophiles were many of them as ignorant of their treasures as the modern "new who finishes a library at so much per yard, and the still more vacuous Croesus who ordered his bookseller to send him "a copy of the next book which Mr. Shakespeare published." Busts and ornaments naturally rendered the Roman libraries attractive to their A library, or rather what we should call a book-closet, was found in Herculaneum. It was so small that a person by stretching out his arms could touch either side of it Cases containing books in rolls, and numbered, ran round the room. It is often considered surprising that many copies of well-known books existed, and could be procured from the Sosil of the day at most reasonable rates; but Romans, of any literary pretensions, had slaves at work in their villas employed as copyists, and Merivale shows that numerous copies of a book could be made from dictation at a speedy rate and very low expense. This consideration lessens the marvellous character of the enormous library of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, or that of Eumenes. Very different to the copying-room of a Roman villa in its silence and the earnestness of the scribes was the scriptorium of the monasteries. The usual errors of 'itacisms' and the like were still repeated in the copies of MSS. made in these establishments, but they were now due to the copyist's defective glance rather than his faulty ear. Much as we should like to linger among the purple and golden floriated missals in these scriptoria, where the lamp of literature burnt dimly amid surrounding darkness, it is to the modern library rather that we must address ourselves. Of libraries in private houses at present, as distinguished from mere book-rooms, most scholars must retain pleasing recollections. Some few are eminent either for their own charms, or from the intrinsic interest of the books which they enshrine. Here is one, for instance, belonging to a learned Q.C., but only containing books of general literature, his working collection being at his rooms in the Temple. Oak cases, six feet high, run round the moderate-sized room, each filled with richly bound treasures. The lawyer will have none of his friends in a ragged coat. We, on the contrary, frequently respect a good book the more because it wears an old brown calf cover, while several special favourites in our shelves are maimed veterans and dilapidated, worm-eaten pensioners. Nor could we do much work in such a library as this. Its arrangement is altogether too formal, and the books are marshalled too neatly. The back garden haunted by cats would still less predispose us to woo the 'Dr. Allen, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, sub voc. 'Bibliotheca.' Muses. Compare with it another which memory recalls; a lengthy room looking upon a brilliant flower-garden, a terrace set with urns closing the pleasaunce, and then wild hills losing themselves in the purple west where the sun has just bidden farewell to Selkirkshire. The walls of this library are painted a subdued red colour. Shelves run round it littered, order in disorder, with a perfectly chosen collection of books for such a rural situation. A glance shows Mr. Van Voorst's series of the natural history of the kingdom, White of Selborne, Thoreau, Jefferies, the Ibis; on this side are Ruskin's books, Tennyson, Carlyle, Shelley, the best of modern poetry and criticism; Aldines and Elzevirs repose in that glass case. Folios run round the room on the lower shelves-the Chronicle of Nuremberg, Ship of Fools, Hypnerotomachia-such are some titles which at once catch the eye. And there are low tables and snug chairs, and wax-lights by the huge fireplace, and its mantel-shelf of carved black oak running up to the ceiling. Let us light the candles, close our eyes, take out a book at random (any one in this room will suit), and be sublimely happy. Most persons who use this library have tastes for natural history and the wild sports of our island strongly developed; what more appropriate than to find the best books on the country, therefore, in its shelves? Here is a library of a very different stamp; that of a poet, not unknown to fame. On the sixth or seventh story, under the fantastic tiles of a quaint modern Elizabethan house in a London Square, is a small room hung with a few excellent etchings of Dürer and the Little Masters. A huge Venetian chest occupies one side of the little snuggery, and an old carved oak coffer stands under a few shelves full of blue china. This is the poet's library, here apis Matina More modoque Grata carpentis thyma per laborem he puts together his masterpieces. But where are the books? you ask. The owner of this curious book-room leaves his friends sitting by the old-fashioned table drinking Rhenish wine in Venetian goblets, and opens the oak-chest. It contains one or two of the classics, some Icelandic sagas, and a few curiosities of literature, but what gems are these! Here is a volume bound in crimson morocco, with the bees of De Thou stamped on the cover; then comes one in faded green, with the letters C T on the side, showing that it belonged to the ill-fated Marie Antoinette; and here, again, is a small folio bearing the arms of a yet more famous character, Madame de Pompadour. Each book, in a word, carries a history in the binding or the stamps on it. Many of them are intrinsically valuable, but are rendered ten times more so by their associations. There is no reason why a dweller near the great Library at Bloomsbury should spend his substance and encumber his shelves with the ordinary works of reference, and those books which "no library should be without," as the booksellers say; therefore our friend wisely buys but little of modern literature, collecting a few volumes of a kind which must always gladden a book-lover, and which can easily be enshrined and preserved from the housemaid's sacrilegious touch in his coffer. How different is this modest yet most interesting library from that of the late President Routh, which first filled every sitting-room in the Master's Lodge at Magdalen, then ascended to the bedrooms, and finally overflowed from them, and permeated the passages, a noble collection worthy of that heiluo librorum, its owner, who possessed 200 books not to be found in the Bodleian. Speaking of books with an association reminds us of that most destructive craze of the present day, the collection of book-plates. We grieve to say that both a French and an English amateur have written so-called "Guides" to this infatuation. When a volume is picked up containing an interesting book-plate, the real book-lover prizes it all the more. It has reposed in such and such a library, and furnished smiles or touched the sacred spring of tears in such and such a character. But deliberately to cut out this distinctive mark and then fling aside the volume as useless, while many pains are spent in gumming the book-plate into an album, is a crime of the deepest dye in the republic of books. The childish practice can scarcely be stigmatized adequately by the valuer of books, inasmuch as it greatly depreciates a volume in the eyes of all posterity to be treated in this insensate manner. Far better let the eager collector of book-plates, if he has passed the age when postage-stamps give pleasure, devote his energies, as Punch suggested, to a collection of luggage-labels. This might please the ex-libris maniac (to use the hateful euphemism for book-plate stealers), and would injure no one. As it is, his baleful amusement is destructive, selfish, senile, nay anile, in its stupid recklessness. Truly, there is no end to the aberrations of the collecting mania. The tide may turn ere long, and a collection of the handles of porcelain cups or the marks in the bottom of china be highly esteemed by those who once cut out book-plates from their homes. A book-lover's malison is said ! While lingering over libraries of a distinctive character at the present day it is impossible to avoid a glance at the libraries of our |