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- and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled with great
pains from the most authentic records.”_ Also a small
scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum binding, and with a
frontispiece bringing together at one view the towers and turrets of
King’s College and the magnificent Cathedral of Ely, though
geographically sixteen miles apart, entitled, _“The Cambridge Guide:
its Colleges, Halls, Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the
Town and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.”_ Also a
pamphlet, with a japanned sort of cover, stamped with a disorderly
higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures, claiming to be an
accurate representation of the _“North or Grand Front of Blenheim,”_
and entitled, “A _Description of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the
Duke of Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings,
Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the Gardens and Parks,
and a General Description of the famous China Gallery,_ &.; _with an
Essay on Landscape Gardening: and embellished with a View of the
Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great Park.”_ And lastly, and
to the purpose, there was a volume called “THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.”
It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the many fond
associations connected with it, I should like to immortalize it, if I
could.
But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I may, from
the life.
As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the pages so dear
to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years and years ago, my father
turned over amid the very scenes that are here described; what a soft,
pleasing sadness steals over me, and how I melt into the past and
forgotten!
Dear book! I will sell my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto
Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer
myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer’s shambles.
I will, my beloved,—old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf
from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.
In size, it is what the booksellers call an _18mo;_ it is bound in
green morocco, which from my earliest recollection has been spotted and
tarnished with time; the corners are marked with triangular patches of
red, like little cocked hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an
incurable wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so that
he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams of opening the
anonymous little book in green. There it stands; day after day, week
after week, year after year; and no one but myself regards it. But I
make up for all neglects, with my own abounding love for it.
But let us open the volume.
What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible pupil of a
writing-master has been here? what crayon sketcher of wild animals and
falling air-castles? Ah, no!—these are all part and parcel of the
precious book, which go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.
Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with their juvenile
sonnets, I might write under this horse, _“Drawn at the age of three
years,”_ and under this autograph, _“Executed at the age of eight.”_
Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters, and cousins; and
the hands that sketched some of them are now moldered away.
But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this sea-ditty of
Dibdin’s? The book must have fallen into the hands of some tarry
captain of a forecastle. No: that anchor, ship, and Dibdin’s ditty are
mine; this hand drew them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But
not so fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.
Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely surrounded
indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and in my father’s
hand-writing, the following:—
WALTER REDBURN.
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