himself found in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless these old volumes
contain prophecies of the fate of Rome, both as respects the decline
and fall of her temporal empire and the rise of her spiritual one.
Not without value, likewise, was the work of Anaxagoras on Nature,
hitherto supposed to be irrecoverably lost, and the missing
treatises of Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit, and
those books of Livy for which the classic student has so long
sorrowed without hope. Among these precious tomes I observed the
original manuscript of the Koran, and also that of the Mormon Bible
in Joe Smith's authentic autograph. Alexander's copy of the Iliad
was also there, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still
fragrant of the perfumes which the Persian kept in it.

Opening an iron-clasped volume, bound in black leather, I discovered
it to be Cornelius Agrippa's book of magic; and it was rendered
still more interesting by the fact that many flowers, ancient and
modern, were pressed between its leaves. Here was a rose from Eve's
bridal bower, and all those red and white roses which were plucked
in the garden of the Temple by the partisans of York and Lancaster.
Here was Halleck's Wild Rose of Alloway. Cowper had contributed a
Sensitive Plant, and Wordsworth an Eglantine, and Burns a Mountain
Daisy, and Kirke White a Star of Bethlehem, and Longfellow a Sprig
of Fennel, with its yellow flowers. James Russell Lowell had given
a Pressed Flower, but fragrant still, which had been shadowed in the
Rhine. There was also a sprig from Southey's Holly Tree. One of
the most beautiful specimens was a Fringed Gentian, which had been
plucked and preserved for immortality by Bryant. From Jones Very, a
poet whose voice is scarcely heard among us by reason of its depth,
there was a Wind Flower and a Columbine.