that the _Parlour Library_ was set on foot. Immense numbers of this work were sold to travellers, and every addition to the stock was positively made on the assumption that persons of the better class, who constitute the larger portion of railway readers, lose their accustomed taste the moment they smell the engine and present themselves to the railway librarian. —Preface to a Reprinted Article from the _Times_, 1851. MESSRS. SMITHS’ BOOKSTALLS. The following appeared in the _Athenæum_, 27th Jan., 1849. “The new business in bookselling which the farming of the line of the North-Western Railway by Mr. Smith, of the Strand, is likely to open up, engages a good deal of attention in literary circles. This new shop for books will, it is thought, seriously injure many of the country booksellers, and remove at the same time a portion of the business transacted by London tradesmen. For instance, a country gentleman wishing to purchase a new book will give his order, not as heretofore, to the Lintot or Tonson of his particular district, but to the agent of the bookseller on the line of railway—the party most directly in his way. Instead of waiting, as he was accustomed to do, till the bookseller of his village or of the nearest town, can get his usual monthly parcel down from his agent ‘in the Row’—he will find his book at the locomotive library, and so be enabled to read the last new novel before it is a little flat or the last new history in the same edition as the resident in London. A London gentleman hurrying from town with little time to spare will buy the book he wants at the railway station where he takes his ticket—or perhaps at the next, or third, or fourth, or at the last station (just as the fancy takes him) on his journey. It is quite possible to conceive such a final extension of this principle that the retail trade in books may end in a great monopoly:—nay, instead of seeing the _imprimatur_ of the Row or of Albermarle Street upon a book, the great recommendation hereafter may be ‘Euston Square,’ ‘Paddington,’ ‘The Nine Elms,’ or even ‘Shoreditch.’ Whatever may be the effect to the present race of booksellers of this change in their business—it is probable that this new mart for books will raise the profits of authors. How many hours are wasted at railway stations by people well to do in the world, with a taste for books but no time to read advertisements or to drop in at a bookseller’s to see what is new. Already it is found that the sale at these places is not confined to cheap or even ephemeral publications;—that it is not the novel or light work alone that is asked for and bought.