What we here give in Italics is the duplicate title, on two separate title-pages, of an octavo volume of three hundred and sixty two pages. Why this method of nomenclature should have been adopted is more than we can understand—although it arises, _perhaps_, from a certain confusion and hesitation observable in the whole structure of the book itself. Publishers have an idea, however, (and no doubt they are the best judges in such matters) that a complete work obtains a readier sale than one “to be continued” and we see plainly that it is with the design of intimating the _entireness_ of the volume now before us, that “_The Old Curiosity Shop and other Tales_,” has been made not only the primary and main title, but the name of the whole publication as indicated by the back. This may be quite fair in trade, but is morally wrong not the less. The volume is only one of a series—only part of a whole; and the title has no right to _insinuate otherwise_. So obvious is this intention to misguide, that it has led to the absurdity of putting the inclusive, or general, title of the series, as a secondary instead of a primary one. Anybody may see that if the wish had been fairly to represent the plan and extent of the volume, something like this would have been given on a single page— “_Master Humphrey’s Clock. By Charles Dickens. Part I. Containing The Old Curiosity Shop, and other Tales, with Numerous Illustrations, &c. &c._” This would have been better for all parties, a good deal more honest, and a vast deal more easily understood. In fact, there is sufficient uncertainty of purpose in the book itself, without resort to mystification in the matter of title. We do not think it altogether impossible that the rumors in respect to the sanity of Mr. Dickens which were so prevalent during the publication of the first numbers of the work, had some slight—some very slight foundation in truth. By this, we mean merely to say that the mind of the author, at the time, might possibly have been struggling with some of those manifold and multiform _aberrations_ by which the nobler order of genius is so frequently beset—but which are still so very far removed from disease.