Olive by Dinah Mulock — Read

Captain Rothesay found himself at breakfast on the sixth morning of his stay at Harbury -- so swiftly had the time flown. But he felt a purer and a happier man every hour that he spent with his ancient friend.

The breakfast-room was Harold's study. It was more that of a man of science and learning than that of a clergyman. Beside Leighton and Flavel were placed Bacon and Descartes; dust lay upon John Newton's Sermons, while close by, rested in honoured, well-thumbed tatters, his great namesake, who read God's scriptures in the stars. In one corner by a large, unopened packet -- marked "Religious Society's Tracts; " it served as a stand for a large telescope, whose clumsiness betrayed the ingenuity of home manufacture. The theological contents of the library was a vast mass of polemical literature, orthodox and heterodox, including all faiths, all variations of sect. Mahomet and Swedenborg, Calvin and the Talmud, lay side by side; and on the farthest shelf was the great original of all creeds -- the Book of books.