Let not my readers go away with the idea that the great bookselling firms, proud of their traditions, plant themselves down in Paternoster Row waiting for customers to come. Their business is no exception to the general rule, which requires excessive pushing to keep pace with the competition of rivals. They have travellers in all quarters of the country—they publish catalogues and their terms, which are everywhere disseminated among the trade—and an author may be sure that it is not the fault of the booksellers that he is compelled to sell his crowning work, rich in graphic colouring, in interesting detail, in noble thought, in manly eloquence (I quote the author’s private opinion), to Mr. Tegg or the trunk maker. As I have mentioned Mr. Tegg, let me add, that it is the province of that gentleman to relieve authors and publishers of works which an apathetic public do not appreciate and will not buy. If Mr. Tegg is so fortunate as to purchase the sheets (which he afterwards binds up in a cheap form) at his own price, and sells them at the author’s, he ought by this time to be as rich as the Rothschilds or the Marquis of Westminster. What he does with his bargains, I cannot tell. I see them awhile in glaring colours, regardless of the suns of summer or winter snows, adorning the cheap book-stalls of Holborn, or Fleet Street, or the Strand, charming the eye of the juvenile population of the metropolis, and offering them the advantages of a circulating library without the inconvenience. I occasionally meet them in railway carriages, chiefly (I do not write it disrespectfully) third class. I have met with them in considerable numbers in our seaport towns, and then I miss them and search for them in vain. Where are they? I believe I am not far wrong in conjecturing that they are gone where there are “Larger constellations burning, Mellow moons, and happy skies;” that they stimulate the intellect or soothe the leisure of muscular gold-diggers at Ballarat; that pastoral New Zealanders read them with delight; that they adorn the drawing-rooms of distant Timbuctoo. Let me say a word for the authors of these works. Are they not true philanthropists? Not one book in a hundred pays, yet in what countless succession do they appear! * * * * * * * * * * London: Petter and Galpin, Belle Sauvage Printing Works, E.C. * * * * * ADVERTISEMENTS. _Just published_, _price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _bound in cloth_, _Second Edition_, _Revised and Enlarged_, THE LONDON PULPIT, BY JAMES EWING RITCHIE.