ation
which, if less agreeable, is certainly more profitable to himself.
Occasionally one of these professional bookstallers blossoms into a
shopkeeper in some court or alley off Holborn; but more generally they
are too far gone in drink and dilapidation to get out of the rut.

One of the most curious characters who ever owned a bookstall was Henry
Lemoine, the son of a French Huguenot. He was born in 1756, and for many
years kept a stall in Bishopsgate Churchyard. He wrote many books, and
did much hack-work for various publishers, chiefly in the way of
translations from the French. He gave up shopkeeping in 1795, and became
a pedestrian bookseller or colporteur of pamphlets. In 1807 he again set
up a small stand of books in Parliament Street, and died in April, 1812.
He might have achieved success, and become a respectable member of
society, but his great failing was an all-consuming thirst.

[Illustration: _Henry Lemoine, Author and Bookseller._]

Writing over forty years ago in 'London Labour and the London Poor,'
1851, Henry Mayhew remarked: 'There has been a change, and in some
respects a considerable change, in the character or class of books sold
at the street stalls, within the last forty or fifty years, as I have
ascertained from the most experienced men in the trade. Now sermons, or
rather the works of the old divines, are rarely seen at these stalls, or
if seen, rarely purchased. Black-letter editions are very unfrequent at
street bookstalls, and it is twenty times more difficult, I am assured,
for street-sellers to pick up anything really rare and curious, than it
was in the early part of the century. One reason assigned for this
change by an intelligent street-seller was, that black-letter or any
ancient works were almost all purchased by the second-hand booksellers,
who have shops and issue catalogues, as they have a prompt sale for them
whenever they pick them up at book-auctions or elsewhere.' As we have
already pointed out, the same rule which obtained forty years ago
applies with equal force to-day, and in the chief instances in which we
have met with books well known to be rare, on bookstalls, their
condition has been so bad as to render them valueless, except, perhaps,
for the purpose of helping to complete imperfect copies.

At one time the bookstall-keepers had fairly good opportunities of
making a haul of a few rare books--that was when they were called in to
clear out offices and old houses. A