at a person with L1,000
per annum as income usually spends L100 in rent, and that the
accommodation which can be got for that amount does not permit of one
room being devoted to library purposes. This may be true, but this
explanation is not a valid excuse, for a set of shelves, 13 feet by 10
feet 6 inches, placed against a wall will accommodate nearly one
thousand octavo volumes--the genius of the world can be pressed into a
hundred volumes. An American has advised his readers to 'own all the
books you can, use all the books you own, and as many more as you can
get.' The advice is good, and it is well to remember that by far the
majority of great book-collectors have lived to a ripe old age. The
companionship of books is unquestionably one of the greatest antidotes
to the ravages of time, and study is better than all medical formulas
for the prolongation of life.

The man who has resolved upon getting together a collection of
first-class books may not unreasonably be appalled at the difficulties
which stand in the way. And what, indeed, it may be asked, will become
of the hundreds and thousands of books which are now all the fashion?
How many will survive the levelling process of the next half a score of
years, and how few will be known, except to bibliographers, half a
century hence? The lessons of the past would aid us in arriving at some
sort of conclusion as regards the future, if we were inclined to indulge
in speculation of this vain character. It will, however, be interesting
to point out that of the 1,300 books printed before the beginning of the
sixteenth century, not more than 300 are of any importance to the
book-collector. Of the 50,000 published in the seventeenth century, not
more than perhaps fifty are now held in estimation; and of the 80,000
published in the eighteenth century not more than 300 are considered
worth reprinting, and not more than 500 are sought after.

In a curious little book, 'L'An 2440, revue s'il en fut jamais,'
published in Paris a century ago, there is a very quaint description of
the process by which, in an improved state of society, men would apply
themselves not to multiply books, but to gather knowledge. The sages of
the political millennium exhibited their stores of useful learning in a
cabinet containing a few hundred volumes. All the lumber of letters had
perished, or was preserved only in one or two public libraries for the
gratification of a few harmless dreamers that wer