kept the wound green. He would no more be subdued by their railleries than the Spartan boy by the teeth of the fox. After fumbling with great apparent care for a while with one of the covers, the leather of which had parted from the board, he started up, flourishing a pound note. "See what I got," said he, "inside the leather. Thanks to you all for your pity. I'd be very glad to earn more of it at the same price." His comforters remained in an uncomfortable plight. They openly jeered the pretended finder, but still they could not acknowledge to themselves that they were sure he had not found it. There was a recent precedent of a genuine "find" of fifty pounds in the same room, which had sunk the unlucky pair to whom it befell still lower in the social mire than their former position. One managed to get the money into his possession, and drank for joy while it lasted. The other, after several efforts to secure a dividend, drank for grief during the same period. Two grocers had their moderate profits on the fifty pounds. The families of the lucky men lost their services for two months; they themselves lost health, spirits, and the little character they formerly enjoyed; and their brothers of the trade lost the sum which they subscribed to set up the prodigal boys again."

We wish neither to disparage nor enlogise the caterers of old literature. We present a truthful sketch of the class, and unwillingly acknowledge that they were not strict truth-tellers, nor very temperate in the use of the adulterated mixtures sold by grocers and the powers that reign in ginpalaces, under the titles of beer and spirits. Abusive language often proceeded from their mouths, and in the settlement of controverted cases, they were more ready to appeal to physical force than pure reason. But when a death or a severe loss of any kind occurred in one of their families, the latent good qualities of the brotherhood were at once apparent. While the sorrowful excitement lasted they were prodigal of their time, their little money, and their efforts for the relief of their distressed

neighbour. Without any very pure intentions on their own parts, they were the means of saving many curious and valuable books from destruction. At old furniture auctions, and on stands in back streets, they secured works well worth preservation, and brought them to the known book collectors by whom they were justly valued; and if a virtuoso wanted an odd volume of a valuable set, or a rare article, they searched every available spot in and round the city for him.

There is nothing that can be calculated on with less certainty than the prices to be realised at book auctions. No doubt but when the library of some eminent personage is announced there will be a great concourse to D'Olier or Anglesea-street; and fashionable works, old or new, especially if long sets and well bound, will bring fair and even extravagant prices. But let there be no particular excitement connected with the sale, and you will see valuable old works bought at prices varying from one to six pence per volume. Now, only for the intervention of the hawkers those would fall under the knives of the dealers, who value literature by the stone-weight, and crush the lives out of Hesiod, Plato, Virgil, Tasso, Milton, and Shakespeare in the paper-mill. The criterion of these Vandals is the size of the leaf; so a few pounds weight of the Mud Island Intelligencer is more precious in their estimation than the lost books of Livy if limited to 18mo volumes (in size.

When a literary collector dies it is pitiful to witness the haste with which his heirs pack up the now unregarded library, and cart it off to the furniture mart, from which many valuable volumes will find their way to the caverns of the literary undertakers abovementioned. The fine collection of old Irish music in the possession of Mr. Bunting, found itself soon after his death among the coffins and old account books in Cookstreet, whence it passed piecemeal to sundry soap and candle-shops. Fortunately, a learned and patriotic doctor, to whom the nation will find

itself one day deeply indebted, got wind of the transaction, flew on the wings of a jaunting car to every place, likely and unlikely, and secured a part of the invaluable treasure. Much of it was irrecoverable. There are still, even in our island, souls who can sympathise with the heart-suffering of the poor doctor for the next few months. This estimable gentleman still enjoying a useful existence-there is no necessity to mention him by name.

A shop filled with new or well bound books, on shelves and tables, the backs exhibiting a variety of colours and tasteful gilding, is as cheerful a sight to a man of letters as can be conceived, but a stand of old unsaleable volumes is a very different matter. You have seen the same stand very often; and now passing on a dry, harsh evening, you see the stand-keeper gazing on vacancy: looking at his stock, you do not miss a volume since the last time you saw it. There are the same sombre-coloured backs, with faint trace of ancient gilding, and frequent glimpses of gray or brown paper through rents or worn parts. The unhealthy, foxy hue, wrought by the action of the air, prevails over all; and you imagine that if you take out a volume the body will fall out of the dried-up, cracked boards. The stock consists of old almanacs, odd volumes of the "Racing Calendar," do. of French works printed in the early part of the eighteenth century, and school books, not heard of in schools within the memory of the present generation. You are on speaking terms with the guardian of the stock, and after beating about the bush, you "obnoxiously make your approaches," and ask, "have any of the shelf-keepers moved since last, week?" the answer is not satisfactory; and your next question would be (if asked), "how does the stall-keeper make out the cause?" guessing from the puzzled expression of your face,

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the query which good manners prevent you from shaping in words, he enters on an explanation. "I suppose, sir, you are wondering how I live, and I don't wonder at your wonder. A good many people come by from Monday morning till Saturday night, offering books for sale; and I buy all that I know I can dispose of to the booksellers that have shops. So a good book never stays twenty-four hours in my possession; I can't afford to keep them.'

A person of our acquaintance, occupied about thirty years since in tuition, took more interest in studying Dibden and other authorities on the best editions of the classics, and rare old English works, and in attending auctions, than in the success of his pupils at their public examinations. He at last emptied his pockets of money, but filled his rooms with good old standard authors, and then a bright thought seized him. He would open a shop, and in a few years, rival Luke White of Dublin, or James Lackington of London. After opening, he continued still to add to his already large collection, small collections of the same character. He exhibited his jewels in his window, advertised occasionally, and held long consultations with learned customers on recondite literary subjects, but very few sales were made. He gradually and painfully awoke from his delusion, made no more purchases of heavy stock, got by degrees into the popular school-book line, and barely escaped a sheriff's sale. However, an unincumbered person of good taste and some means, may still make out a decent livelihood by watching sales, making cheap purchases, and distributing catalogues; but if he cannot refrain from senseless competition at crack sales, he will find the business of a green grocer more safe in the end than that of a second-hand bookseller cursed with a good literary taste.

THE peaks of the Balagna were capped with snow. And a chill, icier than all the snows of Caucasus, had fallen upon Fiordilisa, the Lily of Isola Rossa. And the little town itself was melancholy; there was less gaiety in the less frequent songs that arose under Chilina's mulberry tree; for the stranger, who had brought joy to Isola Rossa, had now given it grief.

The letters of Raphael Branscombe to his wife had grown fewer and briefer. There was something forced and false in their tone. They jarred upon the ear of love. Raphael was not a fiend; he had simply great power of enjoying the present, great power of forgetting the past. What of the future? Well, it did not trouble him much. He was a Pyrrhonist as to the far future, while of the immediate future he took no count. He could sup well and sleep well, though to be called in the grayest, chilliest hours of morning to fight a duel. He could utterly forget a man killed or a woman ruined. And he could enjoy the present with a boyish and poetic glee, with a gaiety and insouciance, which seemed dreadful to those who knew him best. Students of human nature will not readily declare such a temperament impossible. Critics will doubtless declare him a monster a mere novelist's Frankenstein. I know the

man.

Raphael occasionally reflected with what he called seriousness on the position in which he found himself. It was curious, if not awkward. He was married to Fiordilisa; he loved her with the purest love of which he was capable; he had spent with her the happiest days of his life. But, now that, having left Isola Rossa far behind, he had reentered London's strong and vivid life, he felt a curious reluctance to return to the idyl of that Corsican seashore. Was it indeed true that he had been there? Was the Fantasia a real barque, or

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a painted ship upon a painted ocean?" Was there indeed such a fountain, with children playing round it-such a house of refreshment as merry guitar-playing Chilina's, with the marble bench under the mulberry tree-such a white sea-beach, veined with red coral-such a noble old patriarch as Angelo Montalti-above all, such a delicious creature, pure in her maidenhood as Eve in Eden, as Fiordilisa? Or was it all a vision? Was Fiordilisa a phantom, a myth, like the fair-haired Lilith, the first wife of Adam? Verily that picture of the mid-sea island seemed much like a dream. But the Seraph had certain bills of jewellers and others to show that it was not altogether visionary; and therefore he could not escape from the undoubtful conviction that there existed a person with a