almanacs, which reproduced to my mental eye the epochs when they had
issued from the press with a distinctness that was altogether
unaccountable. It was as if I had found bits of magic looking-glass
among the books with the images of a vanished century in them. I
turned my eyes towards the tattered picture above mentioned, and asked
of the austere divine wherefore it was that he and his brethren, after
the most painful rummaging and groping into their minds, had been able
to produce nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers and
almanac-makers had thrown off in the effervescence of a moment. The
portrait responded not; so I sought an answer for myself. It is the
age itself that writes newspapers and almanacs, which therefore have a
distinct purpose and meaning at the time, and a kind of intelligible
truth for all times; whereas most other works--being written by men
who, in the very act, set themselves apart from their age--are likely
to possess little significance when new, and none at all when old.
Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something
permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more
ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century,
or perchance of a hundred centuries.

Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers with me
a superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A bound volume
has a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess
for the good Mussulman. He imagines that those wind-wafted records
are perhaps hallowed by some sacred verse; and I, that every new book
or antique one may contain the "open sesame,"--the spell to disclose
treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth. Thus it was not
without sadness that I turned away from the library of the Old Manse.

Blessed was the sunshine when it came again at the close of another