There is a large law library in the State-house, the University has a fair special library for the students, and in the city is a good public circulating library, free, supported by a tax, and much used. For a young city, it is therefore very well off for books. Madison is not only an educational centre, but an intelligent city; the people read and no doubt buy books, but they do not support book-stores. The shops where books are sold are variety-shops, dealing in stationery, artists’ materials, cheap pictures, bric-à-brac. Books are of minor importance, and but few are “kept in stock.” Indeed, bookselling is not a profitable part of the business; it does not pay to “handle” books, or to keep the run of new publications, or to keep a supply of standard works. In this the shops of Madison are not peculiar. It is true all over the West, except in two or three large cities, and true, perhaps, not quite so generally in the East; the book-shops are not the literary and intellectual centres they used to be. There are several reasons given for this discouraging state of the book-trade. Perhaps it is true that people accustomed to newspapers full of “selections,” to the flimsy publications found on the cheap counters, and to the magazines, do not buy “books that are books,” except for “furnishing;” that they depend more and more upon the circulating libraries for anything that costs more than an imported cigar or half a pound of candy. The local dealers say that the system of the great publishing houses is unsatisfactory as to prices and discounts. Private persons can get the same discounts as the dealers, and can very likely, by ordering a list, buy more cheaply than of the local bookseller, and therefore, as a matter of business, he says that it does not pay to keep books; he gives up trying to sell them, and turns his attention to “varieties.” Another reason for the decline in the trade may be in the fact that comparatively few booksellers are men of taste in letters, men who read, or keep the run of new publications. If a retail grocer knew no more of his business than many booksellers know of theirs, he would certainly fail. It is a pity on all accounts that the book-trade is in this condition. A bookseller in any community, if he is a man of literary culture, and has a love of books and knowledge of them, can do a great deal for the cultivation of the public taste. His shop becomes a sort of intellectual centre of the town. If the public find there an atmosphere of books, and are likely to have their wants met for publications new or rare, they will generally sustain the shop; at least this is my observation. Still, I should not like to attempt to say whether the falling off in the retail book-trade is due to want of skill in the sellers, to the publishing machinery, or to public indifference. The subject is worthy the attention of experts. It is undeniably important to maintain everywhere these little depots of intellectual supply.