OF BOOKS AND THE READING THEREOF.

BEING A THIRD LETTER FROM PAUL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, IN THE CITY AND
COUNTY OF NEW YORK, ESQ., TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, OF WASHINGTON,
_olim_, BUT _nunc_ OF NOWHEREINPARTICULAR.


If any person, O my Bobus, had foretold that all these months would go
by before I should again address you, he would have exhibited prescient
talent great enough to establish twenty "mediums" in a flourishing
cabalistic business. Alas! they have been to me months of fathomless
distress, immensurate and immeasurable sorrow, and blank, blind, idiotic
indifference, even to books and friends, which, next to the nearest and
dearest, are the world's most priceless possession. But now that I have
a little thrown off the stupor, now that kindly Time has a little balmed
my cruel wounds, I come back to my books and to you,--to the _animi
remissionem_ of Cicero,--to these gentle sympathizers and faithful
solacements,--to old studies and ancient pursuits. There is a Latin
line, I know not whose, but Swift was fond of quoting it,--

_"Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus amicis,"_--

which I have whispered to myself, with prophetic lips, in the long, long
watches of my lonesome nights. Do you remember--but who that has read
it does not?--that affecting letter, written upon the death of his
wife, by Sir James Mackintosh to Dr. Parr? "Such was she whom I have