t, and at the milk of it. And the tendency of
the human mind is always to get tired before it has made its twenty
cuts; and to try another nut: and moreover, even if it has perseverance
enough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too many, and to
choke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us that few of the
things we desire can be had without considerable labour, and at
considerable intervals of time. We cannot generally get our dinner
without working for it, and that gives us appetite for it, we cannot get
our holiday without waiting for it, and that gives us zest for it; and
we ought not to get our picture without paying for it, and that gives us
a mind to look at it.

65. Nay, I will even go so far as to say that we ought not to get books
too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to its
reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, and
bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting.
That's the way to get at the cream of a book. And I should say more on
this matter, and protest as energetically as I could against the plague
of cheap literature, with which we are just now afflicted, but that I
fear your calling me to order, as being unpractical, because I don't
quite see my way at present to making everybody fast for their books.
But one may see that a thing is desirable and possible, even though one
may not at once know the best way to it,--and in my island of Barataria,
when I get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold for
less than a pound sterling; if it can be published cheaper than that,
the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxation
in other directions; only people really poor, who cannot pay the pound,
shall be supplied with the books they want for nothing, in a certain
limited quantity. I haven't made up my mind about the number yet, and
there are several other points in the system yet unsettled; when they
are all determined, if you will allow me, I will come and give you
another lecture, on the political economy of literature.[10]

[Note 10: See note 6th, in Addenda.]

66. Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my generous
hearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners upon us, like falling
leaves, "Pictures ought not to be too cheap;" but in much stronger tone
I would say to those who want to keep up the prices of pictorial
property, that pictures ought not to be too dear--that i