"Castara," etc. These are but some of the least easily obtainable works included in this biblical gold-mine (to use a simile appreciable by a commercial-minded folk). There are besides-again to name only a selection-the whole of "The Faerie Queene," and poems by Donne, Withers, Lovelace, Drummond, Carew, Fulke Greville, Gascoigne, etc. Compelled to limit himself to the reading of one book, what lover of poetry would not unhesitatingly decide upon this library in a single volume? The other work of Southey's for which Autolycus feels a strong regard is "The Doctor," the first five volumes of which, published anonymously during the author's lifetime, were picked up a few years ago for half-a-crown. This strange medley, charged with all manner of learning, yet never loaded with it, is one of the most delightful of works in that class of what might be called inconsequent books-books in which the author gossips on wisely, profoundly, humorously, by turns, on all manner of subjects as they arise. For the sake of those poor folk-Autolycus pities them from the bottom of his heart-who read none but new books, or old books new-issued, it is to be wished that

some enterprising publisher would give us a fresh edition of the fascinating "Doctor," acquaintance with whom is at once a source of much entertainment and a liberal education in Literature.

It is impossible to bring within the purview of a single chapter all the fruits gathered from the bookstalls, and I have named but one or two "finds" that have been taken more or less at haphazard from the shelves. They serve to show that to-day, as in the days of Dibdin, the second-hand bookshops yet have in them something better than tattered copies of the dominant novel, either in its superseded three-volume form, or in the paper covers of its latest manifestation. There are other pleasures of the Autolycus of the bookstalls which might be mentioned. There is an unquestionable delight in buying an odd volume and haunting the stalls in a search for its companions. For a single penny, some eighteen years ago, I purchased Tennyson's "Queen Mary," in the neat red cloth "Cabinet edition." Thenceforth, there was, besides the general pleasure of turning over the bookstall wares, the delight of occasionally picking up a fresh volume of the series, until

gradually-it took about ten years the set of fourteen volumes was completed. Another "hunt" of the same kind has been for the original issues of the pocketable volumes of the companionable Bayard Series-a hunt which still gives pleasure, for there is the hope that some day with that luck which attends Autolycus upon his wanderings he may add Mr Swinburne's 66 Coleridge's Christabel, and other Imaginative Poems" to its many-coloured companions. Then, too, there is the joy which comes when lighting upon the unique in unexpected places-as when on "picking up" a copy of Bentham's "Fragment on Government it was found to be enriched with the autograph of Cardinal Manning. The pleasures of the Bookstall Autolycus are manifold, and though the days when he could acquire rare folios for a few shillings have gone or become as rare as angels' visits, yet is there a perennial delight in snapping up such unconsidered trifles as those of which a few are here indicated.

SOME KERBSTONE LIBRARIES

Books-we have it on the word of a hundred men who have devoted their whole lives to the writing of them-afford an unending solace for humanity in all its trials. Man, indeed, and I take no credit for the discovery of so obvious a definition may be differentiated from the rest of animate nature by being classified as "the reading animal." It is true that, from time to time, in country fair or Metropolitan hall of varieties, a pig, a dog, or a horse has been shown so far humanised, or de-brutalised, as to be able to pick out, at command, one or other of the six and twenty arbitary signs which are to us as the mystical and complex key to all knowledge human and divine.

It is when one has got far beyond the b, a, ba, of the infant school (and the learned pig!) that the true delights of the wonderful art become manifest; and how different from all

other arts, in that it can be enjoyed to the full, or almost to the full-for possession does count, after all-by those to whom Fortune has dealt her favours in the skimpiest fashion. Well have I known this for a fact from days when I was as the boy in Mary Lamb's poem. Have I not had many a half-fearful glance well on into a volume before very shame the knowledge that, if challenged, I had not the wherewithal to make it mine-has made me replace it on the stall? Have I not gone on my way, my memory enriched, perchance by some sweet lyric from the page of Herrick, or with half-a-dozen sounding lines from Chapman's Homer ringing in my brain, while the worthy dealer (all dealers in books are worthy-that may be taken as an axiom) who furtively glanced at my pockets to see if they bulged unduly, knew nothing of that which I was carrying away in my mind, and, indeed, he was nothing the poorer, and I might yet return and make the soberly-clad volume of the "Hesperides or the tattered "Iliad" my own?

But if the book-loving Autolycus when penniless may pilfer true riches-and keep on