looked for. The book-buyer of 1900 will be glad to buy at to-day's
prices. I take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so. Good
finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that but a few short weeks
ago I picked up (such is the happy phrase, most apt to describe what was
indeed a 'street casualty') a copy of the original edition of _Endymion_
(Keats's poem--O subscriber to Mudie's!--not Lord Beaconsfield's novel)
for the easy equivalent of half-a-crown--but then that was one of my
lucky days. The enormous increase of booksellers' catalogues and their
wide circulation amongst the trade has already produced a hateful
uniformity of prices. Go where you will it is all the same to the odd
sixpence. Time was when you could map out the country for yourself with
some hopefulness of plunder. There were districts where the Elizabethan
dramatists were but slenderly protected. A raid into the 'bonnie North
Countrie' sent you home again cheered with chap-books and weighted with
old pamphlets of curious interests; whilst the West of England seldom
failed to yield a crop of novels. I remember getting a complete set of
the Bronte books in the original issues at Torquay, I may say, for
nothing. Those days are over. Your country bookseller is, in fact, more
likely, such tales does he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues
does he receive by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than
to part with them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, 'just
to clear my shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room.' The only
compensation for this is the catalogues themselves. You get _them_, at
least, for nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty pretty
reading.

These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us the conviction
that there never were so many private libraries in course of growth as
there are to-day.

Libraries are not made; they grow. Your first two thousand volumes
present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly little money. Given 400
pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course,
without undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround
himself with this number of books, all in his own language, and
thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is
possible to be happy. But pride is still out of the question. To be
proud of having two thousand books would be absurd. You might as well be
proud of having two top c