The constant turnover of old books is amazing.  There seems no rest in this world even for folios and quartos.  The first edition of old Burton’s Anatomy, printed at Oxford in a small quarto in 1621, rises to the surface as a rule no less than four times a year; so, too, does Coryat’s Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months’ travels in France, Savoy, Italy, Germany, etc., 1611.  What a seething, restless place this world is, to be sure!  The constant recurrence of copies of the same books is almost startling.  Hardly a year passes but every book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the highest bidder.  No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to turn the pages or examine the index of Book Prices Current is to have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers and the bidding of booksellers.

In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady.  The old favourites hold their own.  Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks.  Puffing and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names are seldom heard.  Were an author to turn the pages of Book Prices Current, he could hardly fail, as he there read the names of famous men of old, to breathe the prayer, ’May my books some day be found forming part of this great tidal wave of literature which is for ever breaking on Earth’s human shores!’ But the vanity of authors is endless, and their prayers are apt to be but empty things.

GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY

There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven; but between times—­and it is of those I speak—­it is otherwise.  Mr. Thomas Greenwood, in a most meritorious work on Public Libraries, supplies figures which show that, without counting pamphlets (which are books gone wrong) or manuscripts (which are books in terrorem), there are at this present moment upwards of 71,000,000 printed books in bindings in the several public libraries of Europe and America.  To estimate the number and extent of private libraries in those countries is impossible.  In many large houses there are no books at all—­which is to make ignorance visible; whilst in many small houses there are, or seem to be, nothing else—­which is to make knowledge inconvenient; yet as there are upwards of 280,000,000 of inhabitants of Europe and America, I cannot greatly err if a passion for round numbers drives me to the assertion that there are at least 300,000,000 books in these countries, not counting bibles and prayer-books.  It is a poor show!  Russia is greatly to blame, her European population of 88,000,000 being so badly provided for that it