sufficient quantity for a whole household for three, four, or five guineas a year-judiciously managed, and by arrangement with other families, for three guineas a year;-administered in the way of a subscription, it represents nothing less than the recreation of a whole family for a twelvemonth. What an investment ! Temple Bar, 1881: "On the Buying of Books." The reader who browses at large in the fields of literature, unrestrained except by circumstance, the reader who fixes his mind for months upon an unattainable book in a far-off book-store, who has courted slumber with a lump of untouched romance protruding through the scattered down of his pillow, he has found out the charm which lurketh within an unopened volume. The pleasure is not merely that of anticipation; it passes insensibly into what I must call realisation. An unusually attractive title, some anecdote we have heard of the author, a chance quotation which comes home to us, or even some totally extraneous association may lend personality to a book of which we know but little, and make it as distinct an acquisition to us, as those which we have read over and over. This experience cannot be uncommon, though it is probably confined to readers with a vein of sentiment.-Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1882. With increase of knowledge has come increasing refinement and weightiness of style. For style, in the true sense of the word, is not something which can be taught. It is, or ought to be, the finest flower of a man's intellectual growth. He arrives at it by laborious processes of choice and selection; the more he knows, the less liable he is to exaggeration; the more ready are his illustrations, the easier his erudition. The richer and more varied is his material, the more intricate and lovely will be the pattern into which he is able to throw it.-Newspaper Article. A WOMAN'S TRIBUTE TO BOOKS. (From "The Spectator," December 10th, 1881.) 66 Sir,-Surely that is a sad article of yours in the Spectator of December 3rd on Cheaper Books." You say, "As to the average Englishman, he simply hates buying books and sometimes, in his eagerness to borrow, performs acts of incredible meanness. We have known authors asked to lend their own copies, by men of ten times their income;" and so on, in the same sad strain. That, Sir, may be true of some, but surely not of all. I am a very 66 "average" Englishwoman, and yet almost the keenest pleasure of my whole life has been to buy books. When I have made acquaintance with a noble, good, and beautiful book, I could not rest until it was mine,-my very own. The years roll back as I write, and I see myself, five-and-twenty of them ago, young, and just married. We had very foolishly married without and against the consent of our parents, and they (God bless them!-they are here no more) thought, I fancy, to unmarry us, by a process of starvation. Many a time (my husband dining at an eating-house) did I eat only dry bread for dinner, all the while guarding and treasuring up-chiefly tied in a corner of my handkerchief for safety, fearing, if discovered, it would go in beef and mutton-a sovereign given me by a cousin, and which I destined to the purchase of "Boswell's Life of Johnson." I had to wait five months ere opportunity favoured me, and not until I had been some time at the Cape of Good Hope did I triumphantly carry home my volumes. But when at last I held them as my own in my eager hands, what were exile, and poverty, and vexation, in comparison ? Sir, every book on my shelves is dear to me, for every book means a sacrifice. But for what an end! In my many sorrows, they-my books-have been unfailing in kindness and comfort. In foolishness they have given wisdom and guidance, they have been strength to my weakness, have helped me to help others, and in their possession has been deep joy; and what is more, they have removed far from my home and from my heart that sore sorrow and trial of woman's life,-loneliness. It is to me a small matter that I have mostly fed poorly and dressed plainly, since, by so doing, I have been enabled to gather under my roof the great and noble of the earth, who look down at me from my walls with the faces of friends. Had I (would to God I could have!) the boon of life once more I should, so far as the blessed acquisition of books goes, live it all over again.—I am, Sir, &c., E. S. ADDENDA. JOSHUA SYLVESTER. 1563-1618. Cease not to learne untill thou cease to live: Who readeth much, and never meditates, Is like the greedy eater of much food, Who so surcloyles his Stomach with his Cates, Tetrastica; or the Quatrains of Guy de Faur, I have been very busy in ordering my study and making an exact catalogue of the books, a drye, tedious piece of slavery, God wott, but I have now finished it alphabetically, so that I can call any of my old leather coats down very readily whenever I please, and enjoy his company as my fancy directs. You may perhaps think I have much mispent my time and been at all these pains to little purpose; but many a tedious hour has it helped me off with, and I flatter myself that many more will slide away with great pleasure, at least with less uneasiness, by their assistance. Seneca shall be my voucher that I do not promise myself this without reason, when he tells us "si te ad ea studia revocaveris omne vitæ fastigium effugeris, nec noctem fieri optabis fastigio lucis; nec tibi gravis eris, nec aliis supervacuus. Probatum est," I must own that the fate of some magnificent collections that we have seen of late might deterr any one from being at the expense and trouble of assembling a numerous army of authors; their legions indeed made them felones de se; the necessitys and different tastes of the heirs to them soon caused their dissipation; mine indeed were most of them raised to my hand, some new levys added by myself, and draughts made out of them, have reduced the whole to a moderate bulk, and if I can command them and use them as long as I am on this side of the grave, "Quid de me judicet hoeres" (Horace Epist. lij. 2, 191) will never trouble me, nor the dissipation of them ever distress my bones.-Roger Gale to the Rev. W. Stukeley, M.D., May 20, 1743, The Family Memoirs of Stukeley, &c. (Surtees Society), 1880, vol. i. 359-60. JAMES THOMSON. 1700-1748. Now, all amid the rigours of the year, |