"To despise all things!" repeated I. "This, at best, is the wisdom
of the understanding. It is the creed of a man whose soul, whose
better and diviner part, has never been awakened, or has died out of
him."

"I did not think that you were still so young," said the virtuoso.
"Should you live to my years, you will acknowledge that the vase of
Bias was not ill bestowed."

Without further discussion of the point, he directed my attention to
other curiosities. I examined Cinderella's little glass slipper,
and compared it with one of Diana's sandals, and with Fanny
Elssler's shoe, which bore testimony to the muscular character of
her illustrious foot. On the same shelf were Thomas the Rhymer's
green velvet shoes, and the brazen shoe of Empedocles which was
thrown out of Mount AEtna. Anacreon's drinking-cup was placed in
apt juxtaposition with one of Tom Moore's wineglasses and Circe's
magic bowl. These were symbols of luxury and riot; but near them
stood the cup whence Socrates drank his hemlock, and that which Sir
Philip Sidney put from his death-parched lips to bestow the draught
upon a dying soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco-pipes,
consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh's, the earliest on record, Dr.
Parr's, Charles Lamb's, and the first calumet of peace which was
ever smoked between a European and an Indian. Among other musical
instruments, I noticed the lyre of Orpheus and those of Homer and
Sappho, Dr. Franklin's famous whistle, the trumpet of Anthony Van
Corlear, and the flute which Goldsmith played upon in his rambles
through the French provinces. The staff of Peter the Hermit stood
in a corner with that of good old Bishop Jewel, and one of ivory,
which had belonged to Papirius, the Roman senator. The ponderous