and empty, the other a third full of Falerian, whose topaz drops had
grown strangely mellow and golden in the ashy cellars of
Herculaneum, and had doubtless been destined for some luxurious
triclinium in the days of Titus. A small Byzantine picture, painted
on wood, with a silver frame ornamented with cornelian stars, and
the background heavily gilded, hung over an etagere, where lay a
leaf from Nebuchadnezzar's diary, one of those Babylonish bricks on
which his royal name was stamped. Near it stood a pair of Bohemian
vases representing the two varieties of lotus--one velvety white
with rose-colored veins, the other with delicate blue petals. This
latter whim had cost a vast amount of time, trouble, and money, it
having been found difficult to carefully preserve, sketch, and paint
them for the manufacturer in Bohemia, who had never seen the holy
lotus, and required specimens. But the indomitable will of the man,
to whose wishes neither oceans nor deserts opposed successful
barriers, finally triumphed, and the coveted treasures fully repaid
their price as they glistened in the gaslight, perfect as their
prototypes slumbering on the bosom of the Nile, under the blazing
midnight stars of rainless Egypt. Several handsome rosewood cases
were filled with rare books--two in Pali--centuries old; and moth-
eaten volumes and valuable MSS.--some in parchment, some bound in
boards--recalled the days of astrology and alchemy, and the sombre
mysteries of Rosicrucianism. Side by side, on an ebony stand, lay an
Elzevir Terence, printed in red letters, and a curious Birman book,
whose pages consisted of thin leaves of ivory, gilded at the edges;
and here too were black rhyta from Chiusi, and a cylix from Vulci,
and one of those quaint Peruvian jars, which was so constructed
that, when filled with water, the air escaped in sounds that
resembled that of the song or cry of the animal represented on the
vase or jar. In the space between the tall windows that fronted the