(very rare), or one's Elzevir _Caesar_ of the right date, or one's first edition of MOLIERE, and then comes, with fiendish glee, the regular collector, and shows you that _Lucasta_ has not the portrait of LOVELACE, that _Caesar_ has not his pagination all wrong (as he ought to have), that the Molieres are Lyons piracies, that half of GILBERT's _Gentleman's Diversion_ is not bound up with the rest, that, generally speaking, there are pages missing here and there all through your books, which you have never "collated," that "a ticket of PADELOUP, the binder, has been taken off some broken board of a book, and stuck on to a modern imitation, and so forth, all through the collection. You cannot sell it; nobody will take as a present this Library of a Gentleman who has given up collecting; even Free Libraries do not want this kind of treasure, and so it remains, littering your shelves, a monument of folly. Happy are the Duffers whose eyes are impenetrably sealed, and who can go on believing, in spite of a modern water-mark, in their sham BURNS MSS. and their volumes with autographs of all the celebrated characters in history. But my eyes are purged, and I do not think you shall find me collecting old books any more. Certainly I shall not venture into auction-rooms, compete with the Trade, and get left with a book artfully run up, thanks to my enthusiasm, to four or five times its market value. As to china, what the Duffer buys is invariably cracked, and the "marks" on which he places confidence are flagrant imitations. He usually begins by supposing that Crown Derby is a priceless possession, also he has a touching faith in chipped blue and white cups and saucers, marked with a crescent. Worcester they may be, but not the right sort of Worcester. And Crown Derby is the very Aldine or Elzevir of this market. You might as well collect shares in the Great Montezuma Gold Mine, and expect to derive benefit from the investment.