and brought me the first volume to look at on Tuesday.  It would have rejoiced the soul of dear Dr. Holmes.  My book is to be set into six or seven or eight volumes, quarto, as the case may be; and although not unfamiliar with the luxuries of the library, I could not have believed in the number and richness of the pearls which have been strung upon so slender a thread.  The rarest and finest portraits, often many of one person and always the choicest and the best,—­ranging from magnificent heads of the great old poets, from the Charleses and Cromwells, to Sprat and George Faulkner of Dublin, of whom it was thought none existed, until this print turned up unexpectedly in a supplementary volume of Lord Chesterfield; nothing is too odd for Mr. Holloway.  There is a colored print of George the Third,—­a full length which really brings the old king to life again, so striking is the resemblance, and quantities of theatrical people, Munden and Elliston and the Kembles.  There are two portraits of “glorious John” in Penruddock.  Then the curious old prints of old houses.  They have not only one two hundred years old of Dorrington Castle, but the actual drawing from which that engraving was made; and they are rich beyond anything in exquisite drawings of scenery by modern artists sent on purpose to the different spots mentioned.  Besides which there are all sorts of characteristic autographs (a capital one of Pope); in short, nothing is wanting that the most unlimited expense (Mr. Holloway told me that his employer, a great city merchant of unbounded riches, constantly urged him to spare no expense to procure everything that money would buy), added to taste, skill, and experience, could accomplish.  Of course the number of proper names and names of places have been one motive for conferring upon my book an honor of which I never dreamt; but there is, besides, an enthusiasm for my writings on the part of Mrs. Dillon, the lady of the possessor, for whom it is destined as a birthday gift.  Now what I have to ask of you is to procure for Mr. Holloway as many autographs and portraits as you can of the American writers whom I have named,—­dear Dr. Holmes, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Prescott, Ticknor.  If any of them would add a line or two of their writing to their names, it would be a favor, and if; being about it, they would send two other plain autographs, for I have heard of two other copies in course of illustration, and expect to be applied to by their proprietors every day.  Mr. Holloway wrote to some trade connection in Philadelphia, but probably because he applied to the wrong place and the wrong person, and because he limited his correspondent to time, obtained no results.  If there be a print of Professor Longfellow’s house, so much the better, or any other autographs of Americans named in my book.  Forgive this trouble, dear friend.  You will probably see the work when you come to London in the spring, and then you will understand the interest that