prints in book-form; a third,
topography; a fourth, the occult sciences, and so forth. I offer no
objection to these partialities; but I entertain an individual
preference for volumes chosen from nearly all branches of the _belles
lettres_, each for its own sake. I do not vote of necessity in all
cases for a book because it is rare, or because it is old, or because
it is the best edition; but I do not think that I should like any
scholar my friend to have the opportunity of pointing out to me (as he
would, wouldn't he?) that I lacked any real essential, as the child
tried to satisfy Longfellow that his shelves were not complete without
a copy of the undying romance of Jack the Giant-killer.

It cannot fail to strike any one opening such books as Bacon's _Sylva
Sylvarum_ or Markham's _Way to Get Wealth_, for how comparatively,
indeed absolutely, small a consideration it is possible to obtain two
works so brimful of interest and curiosity on all subjects connected
with gardening, agriculture, and rural pursuits or amusements. But
both these works long remained--the Bacon yet does so--outside the
collector's pale and cognisance, and the real cause was that they were
alike common; they had been the favourites of successive generations;
edition upon edition had been demanded; and the survival of copies was
too great to suit the book-hunter, who aims at shyer quarry.

Take again, as a sample, a noble old work like the English Bayle, five
substantial folios; it was a question of more than a five-pound note
to become the master of a good, well-bound copy; one in morocco or
russia by Roger Payne twice that amount could once scarcely have
brought down; and now it is _articulo mortis_. The connoisseur finds
it too bulky, and he hears that its matter has been superseded. At any
rate, it is no longer the _mode_, and the mill begins to acquire
familiarity with it. Let the taste return for such big game, and
copies will be as Caxtons are. Most part of the editions will ere then
have been served up again in the form of cheap book-drapery.

The _ne plus ultra_ of interest and respect seems to us to centre in
such collections of books as those of Samuel Pepys, Narcissus
Luttrell, the Rev. Henry White of Lichfield, and Charles Lamb, where
the volumes reflect the personal tastes of their owners, and are, or
have been, objects to them of personal regard. What is to be thought
or said of the man who simply buys works which happen to be in