The same rules which guide the haunter of the stalls are suitable to those who purchase from the regular booksellers. There is so much to be learned, so many artificial rules and distinctions to be observed in everything relating to books, that mistakes are of frequent occurrence. Ignorant assistants have before now unwittingly thrown shabby little books, like Burns' Poems (Kilmarnock, 1786), into the sixpenny-box at the shop door; others have been too lazy to sort the "parcels" as they have come in from the auctioneers, and have bundled the whole contents into the same repository. There are a hundred and one accidents in favour of the book hunter, but he needs experience in order to take advantage of them, and this cannot be got without the expenditure of much time and money and the suffering of many disappointments, which, indeed, seem to increase as he grows older, rather than to diminish. This is doubtless because the sphere of his operations becomes wider until it exceeds that of his experience; the seventh age of the Bibliophile is even as his first. Apart from the books which are fashionable for the time being and invariably command fancy prices, there are others which may be styled "standards," that is to say, are sold over and over again, both by auction and private contract, for sums which vary only according to condition. These for the most part are in several volumes, 8vo, frequently also in 4to or folio. Their very appearance precludes any prospect of a bargain; indeed the purchaser, unless well versed in book-lore, stands a very good chance of paying for mere bulk. When the library at Sion College took fire, the attendants at the risk of their lives rescued a pile of books from the flames, and it is said that the librarian wept when he found that the porters had taken it for granted that the value of a book was in exact proportion to its size. To this day the impression that big books contain wisdom is all but universal. This has always been so, as witness the temporary reputation of Nicholas de Lyra, who wrote and printed 1800 folios of Commentary on the Bible, and of Aldrovandus, whose thirteen large folio volumes on General Zoology (1599-1668) have greatly perplexed the scientific world ever since they were published. Let not the collector be led away by massive tomes, nor imagine that standard works of acknowledged reputation can often be got for less than they are worth.