nugae_ as beneath the dignity
of a national library; but in fact the information which they, and
possibly they alone, convey, is frequently of historical,
biographical, or topographical relevance.

There has been a rather marked tendency to a rise in the value of a
section of technical publications which deals with the earliest
notices in English literature of such subjects as Electricity, the
Microscope, the Steam-Engine, the Paddle-Wheel, and the Telephone, and
the books identified with these subjects are now commanding very high
prices. An uncut copy of Thomas Savery's _Navigation Improved_, 1698,
where the principle of the paddle-wheel is discussed, fetched at
Sotheby's in June 1896, L16, 15s.

This is a somewhat fresh departure, but it is not an unsound or
unreasonable one, and the series is limited. An almost invariable
incidence of these artificial figures is to draw out other copies, and
then the barometer falls.

The name of MR. EYTON is identified with copies of books printed on
vellum or on some special paper, not unfrequently for his own use or
pleasure; and this gentleman's catalogue is serviceable to such as
desire to follow his precedent, of which the modern _Edition de Luxe_
is an outgrowth. Eyton would have proved an invaluable friend to
Japanese vellum, had he belonged to a later decade of the century.

The CHAP-BOOK, which dates from the reign of Elizabeth, and was sold
for a silver penny of her Highness, becomes less rare under the
Stuarts, and common to excess at a later period down to our own days.
A large proportion of this species of literature consists of
abridgments of larger works or of new versions on a scale suited to
the penny History and Garland. Pepys was rather smitten with those
which appeared in and about his own time, and at Magdalen, Cambridge,
with the rest of his library, a considerable number of them is bound
up in volumes, lettered _Penny Merriments_ and _Penny Godlinesses_
respectively. The Huth Collection possesses many which were formerly
in the Heber and Daniel libraries. All these productions share the
common attributes of very coarse paper, very rough cuts, and very poor
type. They are interesting as eminently _folk-books_--books printed
for the multitude, and now, especially when the article happens to be
of unusual importance and rarity, worth several times their weight in
gold. Two catalogues of Chap-Books and Popular Histories were edited
by Mr. Halliwell for the P