brethren, tossed
about in the world outside, have long disappeared, and passed out of
existence for ever.

Among the popular notions passing current as duly certified axioms, just
because they have never been questioned and examined, one is, that,
since the age of printing, no book once put to press has ever died. The
notion is quite inconsistent with fact. When we count by hundreds of
thousands the books that are in the Paris Library, and not to be had for
the British Museum, we know the number of books which a chance refuge
has protected from the general destruction, and can readily see, in
shadowy bulk, though we cannot estimate in numbers, the great mass
which, having found no refuge, have disappeared out of separate
existence, and been mingled up with the other elements of the earth's
crust.

We have many accounts of the marvellous preservation of books after they
have become rare--the snatching of them as brands from the burning;
their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach. It would be
interesting, also, to have some account of the progress of destruction
among books. A work dedicated apparently to this object, which I have
been unable to find in the body, is mentioned under a very tantalising
title. It is by a certain John Charles Conrad Oelrichs, author of
several scraps of literary history, and is called a Dissertation
concerning the Fates of Libraries and Books, and, in the first place,
concerning the books that have been eaten--such I take to be the meaning
of "Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum Fatis, imprimis libris
comestis." This is nearly as tantalising as the wooden-legged
Britisher's explanation to the inquisitive Yankee, who solemnly engaged
to ask not another question were he told how that leg was lost, and was
accordingly told that "it was bitten off."

Nor is there anything to allay the curiosity thus excited in finding
that the French, in the all-comprehensive spirit of their classification
and nomenclature, include the book-eater with the decorous title
Bibliophage, seeing that in so gossiping a work as Peignot's
Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, all that is communicated under this
department is, "Bibliophage signifie celui qui mange des livres." We are
not favoured with any examples explanatory of the kind of books most in
demand by those addicted to this species of food, nor of the effect of
the different classes of books on the digestive organs.

Religious and political int