book-shop of New York or Boston.  Do not suppose that I undervalue these dealers in old and rare volumes.  Many a much-prized rarity have I obtained from Drake and Burnham and others of my townsmen, and from Denham in New York; and in my student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets of the quays.  But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or “chipmunk” that turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and shooting partridges in a nobleman’s preserves on the First of September.  I confess to having felt a certain awe on entering the precincts made sacred by their precious contents.  The lord and master of so many Editiones Principes, the guardian of this great nursery full of incunabula, did not seem to me like a simple tradesman.  I felt that I was in the presence of the literary purveyor of royal and imperial libraries, the man before whom millionaires tremble as they calculate, and billionaires pause and consider.  I have recently received two of Mr. Quaritch’s catalogues, from which I will give my reader an extract or two, to show him what kind of articles this prince of bibliopoles deals in.

Perhaps you would like one of those romances which turned the head of Don Quixote.  Here is a volume which will be sure to please you.  It is on one of his lesser lists, confined principally to Spanish and Portuguese works:—­

“Amadis de Gaula ... folio, gothic letter, FIRST EDITION, unique ... red morocco super extra, double with olive morocco, richly gilt, tooled to an elegant Grolier design, gilt edges ... in a neat case.”

A pretty present for a scholarly friend.  A nice old book to carry home for one’s own library.  Two hundred pounds—­one thousand dollars—­will make you the happy owner of this volume.

But if you would have also on your shelves the first edition of the “Cronica del famoso cabaluero cid Ruy Diaz Campadero,” not “richly gilt,” not even bound in leather, but in “cloth boards,” you will have to pay two hundred and ten pounds to become its proprietor.  After this you will not be frightened by the thought of paying three hundred dollars for a little quarto giving an account of the Virginia Adventurers.  You will not shrink from the idea of giving something more than a hundred guineas for a series of Hogarth’s plates.  But when it comes to Number 1001 in the May catalogue, and you see that if you would possess a first folio Shakespeare, “untouched by the hand of any modern renovator,” you must be prepared to pay seven hundred and eighty-five pounds, almost four thousand dollars, for the volume, it would not be surprising if you changed color and your knees shook under you.  No doubt some brave man will be found to carry off that prize, in spite of the golden battery which defends it, perhaps to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or San Francisco.  But do not be frightened.  These Alpine heights of extravagance climb up from the humble valley where shillings and sixpences are all that are required to make you a purchaser.