side a department for them, but the most handy reference to them
that has come my way is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire
Bibliographique, ou Nouveau Manuel du Libraire, by M. P*****--identified
by his brother detectives as M. Psaume.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

_PART III.--HIS CLUB._

Clubs in General.

An author of the last generation, professing to deal with any branch of
human affairs, if he were ambitious of being considered philosophical,
required to go at once to the beginning of all things, where, finding
man alone in the world, he would describe how the biped set about his
own special business, for the supply of his own wants and desires; and
then finding that the human being was, by his instincts, not a solitary
but a social animal, the ambitious author would proceed in well-balanced
sentences to describe how men aggregated themselves into hamlets,
villages, towns, cities, counties, parishes, corporations, select
vestries, and so on. I find that, without the merit of entertaining any
philosophical views, I have followed, unconsciously, the same routine.
Having discussed the book-hunter as he individually pursues his object,
I now propose to look in upon him at his club, and say something about
its peculiarities, as the shape in which he takes up the pursuit
collectively with others who happen to be like-minded to himself.

Those who are so very old as to remember the Episcopal Church of
Scotland in that brief period of stagnant depression when the repeal of
the penal laws had removed from her the lustre of martyrdom, and she had
not yet attained the more secular lustre which the zeal of her wealthy
votaries has since conferred on her, will be familiar with the name of
Bishop Robert Jolly. To the ordinary reader, however, it may be
necessary to introduce him more specifically. He was a man of singular
purity, devotedness, and learning. If he had no opportunity of attesting
the sincerity of his faith by undergoing stripes and bondage for the
Church of his adoption, he developed in its fulness that unobtrusive
self-devotion, not inferior to martyrdom, which dedicates to obscure
duties the talent and energy that, in the hands of the selfish and
ambitious, would be the sure apparatus of wealth and station. He had no
doubt risen to an office of dignity in his own Church--he was a bishop.
But to understand the position of a Scottish bishop in those days, one
must figure Parson Adams, no r