There is no better form of book, providing always the print be clear and distinct, than the volume which is adapted practically in price and size to the pocket. One man's pocket is more capacious than another's, as one man's purse is longer than another's, and the latter can purchase a volume more expensively got up than the small, useful, charming travelling companions that _Mr. Punch_ has at this moment actually in view while others are in his mind's eye, Horatio. _The Handy-Volume Shakspeare_ (BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO.), which in every way is the model of a pocket-volume, the model _par excellence_, is a member of a family all in one case, a perfect Christmas present. But if one volume is lost, the set is spoilt, and the missing book cannot, in the ordinary course of bookselling nature, be replaced. Consequently only a very careful and methodical person can venture upon travelling about with one of these volumes as his pocket-companion. A little Shakespeare is a dangerous thing. And this is why the small books belonging to _Cassell's National Library,_ price threepence apiece, ought to find favour in the eyes of those who can read in a cab, in a coach, in a train, or even walking. As to a man running and reading the thing's almost impossible, and whoever saw a man on horseback reading a book, except in an old print of _Doctor Syntax_? As the snail carries his shell about with him, so every Englishman can carry his own _Cassell_, and get rid of it too--which is more than the snail can--and can lose it--and can replace it for the small sum of threepence, or if secondhand (for being in limp covers they soon become "secondhand" in appearance) for considerably less. With a volume from this library carried always in the tail-pocket of his coat--the very place to carry a short tale--no one need ever be idle, and every spare moment, as long as he is wearing the coat, can be well occupied. These bits of books are our modern _Curiosities of Literature_. [Illustration: Handy Vols.] Nor must we forget the DICKENS series of Messrs. ROUTLEDGE, who have just brought out a dainty little edition of the _Cricket on the Hearth_. This is a lasting work got up in a lasting manner. And so whether the tale be long, or short, pointed or not, every man for a small sum, in some instances a very small sum, can be his own talebearer: only the tale isn't his, it is somebody else's, but his by purchase.