Another book which has also been speculated in, and with even more disastrous results still, is _Hogarth's Works_, from the original plates, restored by Heath, and published by Baldwin and Cradock, in 1822, at L50. This is a large and sumptuous work, with a secret pocket at the end, in which are, or should be, found the three suppressed plates. The present auction value is not much more than L4, and, judging from appearances, it is very unlikely to get any higher. How many people have burned their fingers over these two tempting works it would be very difficult even to guess; suffice it to say, that the amateur speculator often has half-a-dozen of each on his shelves, and in nine cases out of ten he finds them an encumbrance and a loss. As John Hill Burton truly says, "No good comes of gentlemen amateurs buying and selling". This is, of course, as it should be; but rejoicing at the fate of the enemy is likely to be turned into gall when it is discovered that defeat is bolstered up with the inevitable axiom "Better luck next time". It cannot be denied that, from a practical everyday stand-point, the collector who buys to sell has everything in his favour. Why should he not employ his knowledge to advantage? why be compelled to stock his library at a loss which will fall chiefly on his immediate descendants? why suffer the pain and mortification of ever remembering that after all his books are only lent to him on hire, and that as others have parted with the identical volumes before, so he must also part with them in his turn? The pleasure of possession is mixed with an alloy which is disquieting to the man who loves his books too well. Still, after all, there is one pleasure which the votaries of the new school can never hope to enjoy, and that is the communion with old friends. Their books are strangers, and even though they should learn them by heart, they would be strangers still. The remembrance of happy hours spent with a lost volume is to them as nothing compared with the ringing metal which replaces it; or to put the case as pleasantly as possible, we will say that the speculator regards a book as possessing an interest quite apart from its literary or domestic value. How such an one would hunger after the treasures secured by an eager collector at a fishmonger's shop in Hungerford Market some fifty years ago--"Autograph signatures of Godolphin, Sunderland, Ashley, Lauderdale, Ministers of James II., accounts of the Exchequer Office signed by Henry VII. and Henry VIII., wardrobe accounts of Queen Anne, secret service accounts marked with the 'E. G.' of Nell Gwynne, a treatise on the Eucharist in the boyish hand of Edward VI., and a disquisition on the Order of the Garter, in the scholarly writing of Elizabeth," all of which, as Mr. Rogers Rees narrates, had been included in waste-paper cleared out of Somerset House at L7 a ton. PRINCIPAL SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM WHO PUBLISH CATALOGUES.