living matter of each one; between it and him there are henceforth no secrets.1

Descending, however, from so high a sphere, we shall find that the collector and the scholar are so closely connected with each other that it is difficult to draw the line of separation between them. As dynamic philosophers say, they act and react on each other. The possession of certain books has made men acquainted with certain pieces of knowledge which they would not otherwise have acquired. It is, in fact, one of the amiable weaknesses of the

1 How a nature endowed with powerful impulses like these might be led along with them into a totally different groove, I am reminded by a traditionary anecdote of student life. A couple of college chums are under the impression that their motions are watched by an inquisitive tutor, who for the occasion may be called Dr Fusby. They become both exceeding wroth, and the more daring of the two engages on the first opportunity to "settle the fellow." They are occupied in ardent colloquy, whether on the predicates or other matters it imports not, when a sudden pause in the conversation enables them to be aware that there is a human being breathing close on the other side of the "oak." The light is extinguished, the door opened, and a terrific blow from a strong and scientifically levelled fist hurls the listener down-stairs to the next landing-place, from which resting-place he hears thundered after him for his information, "If you come back again, you scoundrel, I'll put you into the hands of Dr Fusby." From that source, however, no one had much to dread for some considerable period, during which the Doctor was confined to his bedroom by serious indisposition. It refreshed the recollection of this anecdote, years after I had heard it, and many years after the date attributed to it, to have seen a dignified scholar make what appeared to me an infinitesimally narrow escape from sharing the fate of Dr Fusby, having indeed just escaped it by satisfactorily proving to a hasty philosopher that he was not the party guilty of keeping a certain copy of Occam on the sentences of Peter Lombard out of his reach.

set, to take a luxurious glance at a new acquisition. It is an outcropping of what remains in the man, of the affection towards a new toy that flourished in the heart of the boy. Whether the right reverend or right honourable Thomas has ever taken his newbought Baskerville to bed with him, as the Tommy that was has taken his humming-top, is a sort of case which has not actually come under observation in the course of my own clinical inquiries into the malady; but I am not prepared to state that it never occurred, and can attest many instances where the recent purchase has kept the owner from bed far on in the night. In this incidental manner is a general notion sometimes formed of the true object and tenor of a book, which is retained in the mind, stored for use, and capable of being refreshed and strengthened whenever it is wanted. In the skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious work in the great conflict of the Roxburghe sale, it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated, on the authority of the great historian of the war, that Earl Spencer, the victor, "put each volume under his coat, and walked home with them in all the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph."1

1 The author, from a vitiated reminiscence, at first made the unpardonable blunder of attributing this touching trait of nature to the noble purchaser of the Valderfaer Boccaccio. For this, as not only a mistake, but in some measure an imputation on the tailor who could have made for his lordship pockets of dimensions so abnormal, I received due castigation from an eminent practical man in the book-hunting field.

Ere next morning he would know a good deal more about the contents of the volumes than he did before.

The Gleaner and his Harvest.

HERE are sometimes agreeable and sometimes disappointing surprises in encountering the interiors of books. The title-page is not always a distinct intimation of what is to follow. Whoever dips into the Novellæ of Leo, or the Extravagantes, as edited by Gothofridus, will not find either of them to contain matter of a light, airy, and amusing kind. Dire have been the disappointments incurred by The Diversions of Purley-one of the toughest books in existence. It has even cast a shade over one of our best story-books, The Diversions of Hollycot, by the late Mrs Johnston. The great scholar, Leo Allatius, who broke his heart when he lost the special pen with which he wrote during forty years, published a work called Apes Urbana-Urban Bees. It is a biographical work, devoted to the great men who flourished during the Pontificate of Urban VIII., whose family carried bees on their coat-armorial. The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, has sorely perplexed certain strong-minded women, who read nothing but genuine history. The book which, in the English translation, goes by the

name of Marmontel's Moral Tales, has been found to give disappointment to parents in search of the absolutely correct and improving; and Edgeworth's Essay on Irish Bulls has been counted money absolutely thrown away by eminent breeders. There is a sober-looking volume, generally bound in sheep, called MacEwen on the Types-a theological book, in fact, treating of the types of Christianity in the old law. Concerning it, a friend once told me that, at an auction, he had seen it vehemently competed for by an acute-looking citizen artisan and a burly farmer from the hills. The latter, the successful party, tossed the lot to the other, who might have it and be dd to it, he "thought it was a buik upo' the tups," a word which, it may be necessary to inform the unlearned reader, means rams: but the other competitor also declined the lot; he was a compositor or journeyman printer, and expected to find the book honestly devoted to those tools of his trade of which it professed to treat. Mr Ruskin, having formed the pleasant little original design of abolishing the difference between Popery and Protestantism, through the persuasive influence of his own special eloquence, set forth his views upon the matter in a book which he termed a treatise "on the construction of sheepfolds." I have been informed that this work had a considerable run among the muirland farmers, whose reception of it was not flattering. I think I could also point to a public

library in England, the keeper of which justified his high character for classification and arrangement by binding up this production between "suggestions as to eating off turnips with stock" and "an inquiry concerning the best materials for smeering." Peignot discusses, by the way, with his usual scientific precision, as a department in Bibliography, "Titres de livres qui ont induit en erreur des Bibliothecaires et des Libraires peu instruits." After mentioning a treatise De Missis Dominicis, which was not a religious book, as it might seem, but an inquiry into the functions of certain officers sent into the provinces by the emperors and the early kings of France, he comes nearer to our own door in telling how "un ignorant avait placé le Traité des Fluxions de Maclaurin avec les livres de pathologie, prenant pour une maladie les fluxions mathématiques." 1

Logic has not succeeded as yet in discovering the means of framing a title-page which shall be exhaustive, as it is termed, and constitute an infallible finger-post to the nature of a book. From the beginning of all literature it may be said that man has been continually struggling after this achievement, and struggling in vain; and it is a humiliating fact, that the greatest adepts, abandoning the effort in despair, have taken refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose

1 Dict. de Bibliologie, i. 391.