Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/57

 Rh was tempered by one of those easements often occurring in a world, which, if not the best, is certainly not the worst of all possible worlds. For the convenience of servants, or for some other reason, the children were much more in the drawing-room on Sundays than on any other day; and it was an unwritten rule that any book that lived in the drawing-room was fit Sunday reading. The consequence was that from the time I could read until childish things were put away, I used to spend a considerable part of the first day of the week in reading and re-reading a collection of books, four of which were Scott's poems, 'Lalla Rookh,' 'The Essays of Elia,' and Southey's 'Doctor.' Therefore it may be that I rank 'Lalla Rookh' too high."

Blessed memories, and thrice blessed influences of childhood! But if "Lalla Rookh," like "Vathek," was written to be the joy of imaginative little boys and girls (alas for those who now replace it with "Allan in Alaska," and "Little Cora on the Continent"), the notes to "Lalla Rookh" were, to my infant mind, even more enthralling than the poem. There