far as they might beget wrong conceptions of what was or is possible. But, recollecting what Constable did,—recollecting that it was mainly his example and success that called into being those other Edinburgh publishing firms, contemporary with his own or subsequent, which have maintained till now the place won by him for Edinburgh in the commerce of British literature,—recollecting also how largely he led the way in that enormous change in the whole system of the British book trade, now almost consummated, which has liberated publishers from the good old necessity of waiting for the authors that might come to them, one by one, with already-prepared manuscripts under their arm, the fruit of their careful private labours on self-chosen subjects, and has constituted publishers themselves, to a great extent, the real generators and regulators of literature, projecting serials, manuals, sets of schoolbooks, and whatever else they see to be in demand, and employing literary labour preferably in the service of these enterprises of their own,—recollecting all this, may we not speculate on what might be the consequences in the present Edinburgh of the appearance of another Archibald Constable? The appurtenances are all ready. One has heard complaints lately of the dearth in Edinburgh of those materials in the shape of collections of books which would be requisite for the future sufficiency of the city as a manufactory of such kinds of literature as admit of being manufactured. That is a sheer hallucination. Next to London, and perhaps to Oxford, Edinburgh has the largest provision of books of any city in the British Empire. There are at this moment 800,000 volumes,—say close on a million,—on the shelves of the various public or corporate libraries. Much remains to be done towards making all this wealth of books in Edinburgh as available as it might be; and there ought to be no rest among us till that particular advance is made towards an ideal state of things which shall consist in the conversion of the present noble library of the Faculty of Advocates into the nucleus of a great National Library for all Scotland. But, even as things are, why be indolent, why not utilise our implements? Doubt not that in the present Edinburgh and in the present Scotland, as in other parts of Her Majesty’s dominions, there are, as Napier of Merchiston phrased it, “good ingines, versed and exercised in all manner of honest science,” who, if they were to bestir themselves, and especially if there were another Archibald Constable in the midst of them, would find plenty of excellent employment without needing, unless they chose, to change the territory of their abode! THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. ----- Footnote 1: From _The Scotsman_ of 18th, 19th, and 21st August 1886. Footnote 2: