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"Then, Carlton, I understand that you come forward to oppose Sir Godfrey Norton - a a case of Dares against Entellus, though probably with a different result?' "Yes,' I replied; 'the Whig is my direct antagonist.'

while she is savagely democratic. of the affair, and Lumley heard me Frightful intemperance character- out with the gravity of an Indian ises one generation-total abstin- sachem. When I had finished, he ence is insisted on by the next. said, coollyThe trained bands of Edinburgh that attended at the execution of Montrose, led Argyle to the scaffold. The grandsons of the men who died around their king at Flodden were foremost in their persecution of Queen Mary. Nevertheless, I would die sooner than see her wronged; but she is now labouring under the delusion that she is Jenny Geddes, and I do not relish the notion of having my skull fractured by what my friend Davie Osett would denominate a creepie!"

"Well," said Carlton, laughing, "I think, under the circumstances, we must let you off this time; but remember that such an excuse for evading duty will not always pass muster. And it gladdens me to observe that you are likely to have an active monitor. Nay, Mary-do not blush! Never had we more joyful tidings than what Norman has brought us to-day. But in these discussions we are losing sight of Lumley."

"True, O M.P. that is to be! Let us hark back to our friend."

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Ashford," continued Carlton, "was very strongly of opinion that we should start two men, averring, from his knowledge of the county, that it was quite on the cards that both of them might come in; and you will readily imagine that, having engaged myself to this enterprise, I was anxious to have the best possible man I could procure as my confederate. Not having an extensive acquaintance at the clubs, it occurred to me that Lumley was an excellent person to consult with. His landed estate is in our county, and though he is not a resident because, being a bachelor, he does not deem it necessary to keep up a country establishment-he is, nevertheless, vastly popular. My only fear was that he might prove to be somewhat indifferent.

"I dashed at once into the history

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And you want to find some one to oppose the political hermaphrodite?'

"Precisely so.'

"Then, if you cannot discover a worthier candidate, why I don't care if I venture into the field!' "What-you, Lumley? How delighted our friends will be! This is indeed an unexpected accession of strength.'

"That may or may not be, but at all events we shall make the trial. You see, Carlton, I want excitement. My old feelings were in favour of absolute repose, but I am now satisfied that I was in error. I require some stimulus to keep my blood in circulation; and as I have a decided objection to distilled waters, it occurs to me that politics will have the desired effect. But confound this odious trick of talking loosely! No, Carlton-I have higher motives! I feel, as you do, that it is the duty of an English gentleman to shrink from no sacrifice in support of the principles which he professes. It was grand devotion to their cause, alike by Royalist and Parliamentarian, that makes us regard our old civil war, even now, with sentiments akin to admiration. It was a noble and elevating strife; for men fought on either side, not for plunder or revenge, but from a supreme conviction that they were called on to do battle for the truth. Such days as those let us pray that England may never see again; but Heaven forbid that our sloth and indolence should render us unworthy of our ancestry!'

"I wish," continued Carlton, "that you could have heard Lumley

so deliver himself. He seemed absolutely to dilate as he spoke; and there was an energy in his tone, and a fire in his eye, that I never witnessed before. Rely upon it, he will one day make a sensation in Parliament. Now, don't I deserve credit for having plucked this Theseus from his seat?"

"What!" said I, soars your presumption so high already, that you dare to liken yourself to Hercules? What if I were to say, Beware of Dejanira ?"

"Nay," said Carlton, "I'll warrant that there is no poison in these honest cockades. But let us apply ourselves to business, for I already feel as if I were a member of halfa-dozen committees. To-morrow sees us all en route for Wilbury. When I say all, I include Mary; because Amy here, though very valorous in London, has notions about brickbats, eggs, and sundry kinds of garbage, which, she thinks, are the invariable concomitants of elections, and she would be miserable if left alone while I am prosecuting my canvass. Now I am commissioned by Colonel Stanhope to say that, if Mr Norman Sinclair

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"At twelve precisely. But observe, my good fellow-though the Colonel imposes no conditions, I do, and shall insist peremptorily on their fulfilment. You shall be allowed, as reason is, two or three hours each day to make private speeches, with which I have nothing to do; but the remainder of your time of course excluding reasonable intervals for sleep is to be at my disposal; and whenever it is deemed necessary, either on my behalf or on that of Lumley, that a speech upon the general question should be delivered, we expect you to try your eloquence. On my honour I am serious. Were it only with a view to the future, you must be put into training."

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THE BOOK-HUNTER AGAIN.

HAVING endeavoured to draw at tention to the diagnosis of the bookhunter's condition, or, in other words, to the different shapes which the phenomena peculiar to it assume, we now propose to offer some consolatory remarks on his place in the dispensations of Providence, with a view of showing that, as we truly believe, he is not altogether a mischievous nor a merely useless maniac, but does in reality, however unconsciously to himself, minister in his own peculiar way to the service both of himself and others; and to be properly methodical, our discourse shall be divided and subdivided, insomuch that, taking in the first place his services to himself, we shall subdivide that branch into the advantages which are purely material and those which are properly intellectual.

And first, of material advantages. Holding it to be the inevitable doom of fallen man to inherit some frailty or failing, it would be difficult, had he a Pandora's box-ful to pick and choose among, to find one less dangerous or offensive. As the judicious physician informs the patient, suffering under some cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison lay deep in his constitution— that it must have worked in some shape and well it is that it has taken one so innocuous-so may even the book-hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and salubrious form. To pass over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily spoken of in good society, let us look to the other shapes in which man lets himself out-horse-racing, hunting, photography, shooting, fishing, cigars, dog-fancying, dog-fighting, the ring, the cock-pit, phrenology, revivalism, Socialism-which of these contains so small a balance of evil, counting of course that the amount of pleasure conferred is equal-for it is only on

the datum that the book-hunter has as much satisfaction from his pursuit as the fox-hunter, the photographer, and so on, has in his-that a fair comparison can be struck? These pursuits, one and all, leave little or nothing that is valuable behind them, except, it may be, that some of them are conducive to health, by giving exercise to the body and a genial excitement to the mind; but every hobby gives the latter, and the former may be easily obtained in some other shape. They leave little or nothing behind even the photographer's portfolio will bring scarcely anything under the hammer after the death of him whose solace and pursuit it had been, even if the positives remain visible, which may be doubted. And as to the other enumerated pursuits, some of them, as we all know, are notoriously costly, all unproductive as they are.

But the book-hunter may possibly leave a little fortune behind him. His hobby, in fact, merges into an investment. This is the light in which a celebrated Quaker collector of paintings put his conduct, when it was questioned by the brethren, in virtue of that right to admonish one another concerning the errors of their ways, which makes them so chary in employing domestic servants of their own persuasion. "What had the brother paid for that bauble, for instance?" "Well, £300." "Was not that then an awful wasting of his substance on vanities?" No. He had been offered £900 for it. If any of the Friends could offer him a better investment of his money than one that could be realised at a profit of 200 per cent, he was ready to alter the existing disposal of his capital."

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It is quite true that amateur purchasers do not, in the long-run, make a profit, though an occasional bargain may pass through their hands.

It is not maintained that, in the general case, the libraries of collectors would be sold for more than they cost, or even for nearly so much; but they are always worth something, which is more than can be said of the residue of other hobbies and pursuits. Nay, farther; the scholarly collector of books is not like the ordinary helpless amateur; for although, doubtless, nothing will rival the dealer's instinct for knowing the money-value of an article, though he may know nothing else about it, yet there is often a subtle depth in the collector's educated knowledge which the other cannot match, and bargains may be obtained off the counters of the most acute. A small sprinkling of these even the chance of them excites him,like the angler's bites and rises, and gives its zest to his pursuit. It is the reward of his patience, his exertion, and his skill, after the manner in which Monkbarns has so well spoken; and it is certain that, in many instances, a collector's library has sold for more than it cost him. No doubt, a man may ruin himself by purchasing costly books, as by indulgence in any other costly luxury, but the chances of calamity are comparatively small in this pursuit. A thousand pounds will go a great way in book-collecting, if the collector be true to the traditions of his pursuit, such as we shall herein expound them. There has been one instance, doubtless, in the records of bibliomania, of two thousand pounds having been given for one book. But how many instances far more flagrant could be found in picturebuying? Look around upon the world and see how many men are the victims of libraries, and compare them with those whom the stud, the kennel, and the preserve have brought to the Gazette. Find out, too, anywhere, if you can, the instances in which the money scattered in these forms comes back again, and brings with it a large profit, as the expenditure of the Duke of Roxburghe did when his library was sold.

But it is necessary to arrest this train of argument, lest its tenor might be misunderstood. The mercenary spirit must not be admitted to a share in the enjoyments of the book-hunter. If, after he has taken his last survey of his treasures, and spent his last hour in that quiet library, where he has ever found his chief solace against the wear and worry of the world, the book-hunter shall be taken to his final place of rest, and it is afterwards discovered that the circumstances of the family require his treasures to be dispersed-if then it be found that his pursuit has not been so ruinously costly after all-nay, that his expenditure has actually fructified-it is well. But if the book-hunter allow money-making-even for those he is to leave behind-to be combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish, its exhilarating influence, and becomes the source of wretched cares and paltry anxieties. Where money is the object, let a man speculate or become a miser-a very enviable condition to him who has the saving grace to achieve it, if we hold with Byron that the accumulation of money is the only passion that never cloys. Let not the collector, therefore, ever, unless in some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with any of his treasures. Let him not even have recourse to that practice called barter, which political philosophers tell us is the universal resource of mankind preparatory to the invention of money as a circulating medium and means of exchange. Let him confine all his transactions in the market to purchasing only. No good ever comes of gentlemen amateurs buying and selling. They will either be systematic losers, or they will acquire shabby, questionable habits, from which the professional dealers on whom, perhaps, they look down -are exempt. There are two trades renowned for the quackery and the imposition with which they are habitually stained-the trade in horses and the trade in pictures; and these have, we verily believe, earned their

evil reputation chiefly from this, that they are trades in which gentlemen of independent fortune and considerable position are in the habit of embarking.

The result is not so unaccountable as it might seem. The professional dealer, however smart he may be, takes a sounder estimate of any individual transaction than the amateur. It is his object, not so much to do any single stroke of trade very successfully, as to deal acceptably with the public, and make his money in the longrun. Hence he does not place an undue estimate on the special article he is to dispose of, but will let it go at a loss, if that is likely to prove the most beneficial course for his trade at large. He has no special attachment to any of the articles in which he deals, and no blindly exaggerated appreciation of their merits and value. They come and go in an equable stream, and the cargo of yesterday is sent abroad to the world with the same methodical indifference with which that of to-day is unshipped. It is otherwise with the amateur. He feels towards the article he is to part with all the prejudiced attachment, and all the consequent over-estimate of a possessor. Hence he and the market take incompatible views as to value, and he is apt to become unscrupulous in his efforts to do justice to himself. Let the single-minded and zealous collector then turn the natural propensity to over-estimate one's own into its proper and legitimate channel. Let him guard his treasures as things too sacred for commerce, and say, Procul, o procul este profani, to all who may attempt by bribery and corruption to drag them from their legitimate shelves. If, in any weak moment, he yield to mercenary temptation, he will be for ever mourning after the departed unit of his treasure-the lost sheep of his flock. If it seems to be in the decrees of fate that all his gatherings are to be dispersed abroad after he has gone to his rest, let him, at all events, retain the re

liance that on them, as on other things beloved, he may have his last look; there will be many changes after that, and this will be among them. Nor, in his final reflections on his conduct to himself and to those he is to leave, will he be disturbed by the thought that the hobby which was his enjoyment, has been in any wise the more costly to him that he has not made it a means of mercenary money-getting.

Having so put in a plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, we might descant on certain auxiliary advantages, as that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely to foster actions of damages for nuisance, trespass, or assault, and the like. But rather let us turn attention to the intellectual advantages accompanying the pursuit, since the proper function of books is in the general case associated with intellectual culture and occupation. It would seem that, according to a received prejudice or opinion, there is one exception to this general connection, in the case of the possessors of libraries, who are under a vehement suspicion of not reading their books. Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those who utter the taunt understand the reading of a book. That one should possess no books beyond his power of perusal-that he should buy no faster than as he can read straight through what he has already bought, is a supposition alike preposterous and unreasonable. Surely you have far more books than you can read," is sometimes the inane remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circulating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one after the other, with a dreary dutifulness that he may be sure he has got the value of his money.

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It is true that there are some books-as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott

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