even as a Sermon," he says, "would I have addressed the present Discourse to a promiscuous audience; and for this reason I likewise announced it in the titlepage, as exclusively ad clerum, i.e. (in the old and wide sense of the word) to men of clerkly acquirements, of whatever profession. I would that the greater part of our publications could be thus directed, each to its appropriate class of readers. But this cannot be! For among other odd burrs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our luxuriant activity, we have now a READING PUBLIC-as strange a phrase, methinks, as ever forced a splenetic smile on the staid countenance of Meditation; and vet no fiction! For our readers have, in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have waxed proud. It would require the intrepid accuracy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise number of that vast company only, whose heads and hearts are dieted at the two public ordinaries of Literature, the circulating libraries and the periodical press." Coleridge himself would probably have been astonished at the much-increased promiscuousness of our present audience. Readers, no doubt, in the long run get at the class of books they want without any special "direction," provided direction," provided they keep their eyes open; and the clerkly man may be found in unexpected places. But a great economy of trouble might be ensured by some orderly plan which should index literature, and enable articles of permanent value to be more readily discovered among the heaps of ephemeral productions that, by being too multitudinous for any person of ordinary leisure to hunt through them, tend to obscure the pearls scattered sparsely among them. What has mainly suggested these jottings, in relation to periodicals viewed as ephemeral literature, is a copy of the model catalogue of books, and of the regulations of the Glasgow Reading Club. As the University Magazine is on the club's list of periodicals, it behoves us to apologise for quoting what they say of magazines, which consists of the crushing assertion that "periodicals are of value only during the month of their currency." This is indeed to be ephemeral with a vengeance; but if fashion says this is so, why, so it is. Yet it is difficult to see why a paper not written for any particular month should have a specific value at one end of a particular month, and be valueless at the other. Perhaps, however, this appalling dictum is destined only to stimulate the borrowers from the club to return their numbers with promptitude; for when the authorities want to sell periodicals, and that at the time when they have stated them to be valueless, they ask half price for them, and suggest to their members the notion of bound volumes of magazine numbers, while they gently stimulate buyers by the citation of Ruskin's sarcasm: "We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body; now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it." The Noctes Ambrosianæ no doubt looked very much like magazine articles when they appeared in Blackwood, but they have managed to live nevertheless. But then there was probably no critical weekly to say that Kit North was too good for the magazine. Charles Lamb's essays would have made admirable magazine papers, but Elia would surely have outweighed a turbot in value even a month after publishing day, for Elia is not stale yet. It is true that many papers are reprinted from magazines in a form designed to be permanent; and this fact has probably aided in making the periodical regarded as only a temporary vehicle. Nevertheless, though they should be reprinted, it is difficult to understand why the original imprint should have its value extinguished by lapse of thirty days, unless on the ground of literature being like the old woman who had so many children she did not know what to do. It was formerly the common custom to give magazines quite a respectable lease of life by binding the numbers into half-yearly volumes. But the miscellaneous extension of magazine literature probably renders this plan less frequently resorted to, except in the case of public libraries. It would cumber our shelves, indeed, were some fifty volumes of periodical literature to be added to our books every half-year. It is delightful to turn aside from this monotonous prospect, and to assure ourselves that literature, even of an order as regularly recurrent as pauper children, is not always treated as ephemeral and despicable. We saw the other day a volume of an extinct periodical-the Germ, sometime the organ of the Preraphaeliteswhich had been advertised for sale in a bookseller's catalogue at the price of 7s. 6d. This may seem a modest and reasonable sum for a small volume. An æsthetic individual happened to see the announcement at one o'clock in the morning, the catalogue having reached him by post a few hours before. He immediately wrote and despatched a letter to secure the prize, and, to make doubly sure, called upon the bookseller immediately after breakfast. After obtaining the Germ-let us pro- In the case of the Germ, it is real and rare value that causes the demand for its numbers, albeit out of date. But the products of intellect being so readily multiplicable, and the public in very truth being quite as much led by fashion as by mind, it is as a rule not intellectual so much as antiquarian value that brings any typographic work into the sort of demand that would warm the heart of the despairing scribe. Those who cry out upon the indignity put upon literature by the edict that magazines are valueless after thirty days, and by the prices at which the publisher will offer a book after Mr. Mudie, the publishers' publisher, has been satiated, ought to turn with joy to the price lists of Mr. Quaritch, the great bookseller, who has lately been making purchases at the sale of the Didot collection in Paris. Surplus copies even of Mr. Tennyson's poems may be sold at a cheap price; his hero Lancelot du Lac is more prized by himself, for a couple of volumes anent him, printed in Paris in 1494, can only 66 be acquired for the sum of £325. Our modern sages struggle for a hearing, many of the best of them publishing their works at a pecuniary loss, but the book of the "Sept Sages de Rome" is not obtainable under £200. But is it the wisdom that is prized, or the fact that the folio containing it can be described as Superbe exemplaire, très-grand de marges, et L'Un des deux connus"? We propose to take this lesson to heart ourselves. We shall cease to give birth to thousands of valueless ephemerides, and shall bring out our next volume of philosophy in noble style on vellum, with at least a foot of margin, and shall only allow two copies to be issued. These Mr. Quaritch shall sell for us at a few hundred pounds apiece. No one's prejudices will be disturbed by our thought, and to the backs of our volumes we shall be able to point with pride, in the cabinets of kings. Until those resplendent rarities appear, we look not for fame or immortality. Does not the tres ioyeuse, plaisante, recreative, hystoire of our faitz, gestes, triumphes et prouesses now appear on ordinary paper at a vulgar price, and within reach of that multitudinous individual whom yet, even if we follow Coleridge's special appeal ad clerum, we so often fail to move, and whom after thirty days we are found to have wearied out. Through Mr. Quaritch (who, so soon as he begins to exercise his powers for live authors, will far surpass Mr. Mudie) we have been led so sensibly into such high society as that of "El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha" (valued at a hundred pounds, albeit il manque un f. dans le corps du texte), of Palmerin de Inglaterra (an uncommon specimen, which, however, Mr. Quaritch avows needs to be washed), and of the "esforçado cavallero Don. Tristan de Leonis," &c., &c., that we feel it difficult to return to humble folk and cheap ephemeral literature. But, coming back to common day, we do sympathise with the reader who cannot take in all the magazines, and yet would miss nothing likely to suit his taste; and we hope that there will yet be found a way of providing a classified index of literature. In spite of the Spectator's allegation against Fraser's Magazine of "snippetiness," we confess to having cut out from Fraser and bound up a number of valuable papers that could not be obtained elsewhere, and probably will never be reprinted; for, in spite o popular fallacy, there is no moving demand for recondite thought. But, in extracting a paper in this way, one has frequently to take also a piece of the articles that precede and follow it. This pro the duces an unsightly effect in the bound volume; and it is even conceivable that one magazine should so conspicuously abound in valuable matter that two articles on subjects of different kinds should be printed side by side, both which articles we might wish to rescue from the ephemera and bind in our classified collections. In such a case we should have to buy an extra copy of the periodical, which would come against the grain if the mystic. period of valuelessness, as reckoned by the librarians, should happen to have begun. We offer, therefore, the practical suggestion that when the Index appears, magazines should be printed with a blank page between their articles when such do not terminate on the second page of a leaf. By this means a magazine would be a collection of pamphlets stitched together, any of which would be readily detachable. True, the paging would come oddly in the volume which rescued the special articles from the miscellaneous ephemera that obscured them; but this difficulty may well be left to the mechanical genius of the day. We must confess to a liking for those forlorn old numbers of magazines which the second-hand booksellers term ". a mass of highly interesting matter." We prefer to see Kit North's Noctes Ambrosianæ in the yellow old sheets, and in the actual type that first passed under his eye-perhaps in the dewy morning after the ambrosial night rather than to possess the same in the most decorous library edition. Our suggestion as to detachable articles would meet the case, and at least rescue what to any reader might seem true and valuable grain from the society of the chaff, which, we have shown good authority for believing, makes the whole produce of any periodical threshing of the brain valueless in thirty days. SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITIES. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD, July 20. THE spirit of this University, such as it is, may be said to be dispersed to the four corners of the earth just now, with the disjecta membra which go to form its corporate existence. Nevertheless, although Oxford is scaling the Jungfrau, and performing feats on the Fiord, and otherwise disporting itself gaily and giddily, a select residuum remains in residence. up to a certain fixed date, viz., St. Mary Magdalene's day, which, your non-ecclesiological readers must know, is the twenty-second day of this bright and sunny month. Moreover, those who remain to toy with the delights of this medieval Athens of ours find abundant recompence. The Bodleian is empty, and you may command the services of half-a-dozen assistants to fetch and carry ponderous or imponderable tomes. The self-asserting and quite too pleasant undergraduate, with his flannels and his fun, is conspicuous by his absence, and his place on the rickety cricket drags is occupied by the festive scout, who is bent on liquidating the earnings of two terms with all possible velocity. That modern excrescence, the academical lady, has " gone down," and may be found by diligent search treading on the heels of Pan-Anglican bishops, or in resplendent dowdiness at second-rate watering-places. The common objects of the University, in short, are remote from the Isis, and the whole place looks like a banquet-hall deserted. Under these circumstances, the groves of Academus are enjoyable, and if you have the entrée of a common room where the judicious Fellow congregates quietly and appreciates otium without dignity, you are indeed blessed. Oxford in the Long-not to beat about the bush-is Oxford at its very best. It is very unacademical-using the term in its modern sense-and supremely collegiate. Perhaps you must be a thoroughbred to enjoy it heartily; yet even a Goth or an American bishop could hardly fail to be impressed with its grave, silent splendour, so suggestive of other ages and widely-differing phases of thought. Above all, the chiefest glory of Oxford in July is the Magdalen Gaudy. Those who are familiar with Macaulay's dramatic description of the "embattled pile," and of his stirring story of how the Fellows resisted King James, and the very porter flung down his keys rather than admit the intruded Catholics, may not perhaps have come across Bishop Cleveland Coxe's lines in honour of the brave old college, commencing England and Oxford, Magdalen and May-day. Suffice it that they are a fine tribute of American genius to the most beautiful college in either university, and the one also which alone |