し The Parlour Window; OR, ANECDOTES, ORIGINAL REMARKS ON BOOKS, ETC. BY THE REV. EDWARD MANGIN, AUTHOR OF "PLEASURES ARISING FROM A LOVE OF BOOKS." "A TESSELATED PAVEMENT WITHOUT CEMENT; HERE A BIT OF BLACK Burke's Character of Lord Chatham. LONDON: EDWARD LUMLEY, 56, CHANCERY LANE. MDCCCXLI. PREFACE. I HAVE, for want of a more suitable title, called my volume the PARLOUR WINDOW; meaning, I believe, a book to be taken up by any one who, for a quarter of an hour now and then, has nothing better to read or to do, during such fractions of time as are at our disposal while waiting for breakfast or dinner, or until the rain shall be over, or until husbands shall have finished writing letters, or wives and daughters have put on their shawls, &c. But parlour windows no longer have permanent seats; and if they had, no modern would sit on them. There are, however, in all drawingrooms, large round tables of mahogany, or tulipwood, on which books are usually flung; while a desultory air is given to the display, to signify that the books are not books of study, and that they may be thrown down, just after they have |