At the present day books constitute one of the necessities of life and private libraries one of its luxuries. The collector has such ample scope for the exercise of his favourite pursuit that it has long since become a question not so much of accumulating a large number of miscellaneous volumes, as of exercising a rigid discrimination and confining one's attention to works of a certain class, to the almost entire exclusion of all others. Thus, some book hunters collect first, or, at any rate, early, editions of popular modern authors, such, for example, as Dickens, Thackeray, and Lever; others collect old editions of the Scriptures, a few, the expensive early printed volumes which are every year becoming absorbed into the public libraries, and consequently growing more scarce. A small number attempt to form an extensive all-round library, but they rarely, if ever, succeed, partly because life is too short for the purpose, and money too limited in quantity. Occasionally a large collection comes to the auctioneer's hammer, but in nearly every instance it will be found that it represents the labours of several generations of owners, each of whom has contributed the principal publications of his day or taken advantage of any proffered bargain which he may have happened to come across during the course of his lifetime. The book lover however is not content with mere acquisition, he feels it his duty to know something of the inner life, so to speak, of each volume on his shelf--something, that is to say, beyond the outside lettering. He wishes to know the chief incidents in the history of the person who wrote it, under what circumstances it was written and why, how many editions have been published, whether the particular copy is perfect, how much it is worth from a pecuniary point of view, and occasionally the nature of the contents. The word "occasionally" may be considered by some as used in an objectionable sense, implying in fact that book lovers are not always in the habit of reading what they possess. Let the collector of Bibles say whether he is in the habit of reading the various editions which he has been at such pains to collect, and it will then be time enough to inquire into the practices of other collectors who, like himself, though in different departments, may not consider themselves justified in spending the amount of time necessary for careful and satisfactory study. In truth, if all books were read, it is only reasonable to suppose that all libraries would be small; and, as we know the contrary to be the fact, we must acknowledge the truth of the main proposition to a very large extent. The happiness of the book lover, as we know him when in the plenitude of his glory, consists by no means in reading, but in the contemplation of his possessions from afar; an inane treatise on theology becomes the object of his daily prayers when bound in morocco and stamped with the Golden Fleece of Longepierre.