When, by slow degrees, the various trades moved in a direction west of Temple Bar, it was only natural that the trade in second-hand books should be similarly attracted. The Strand itself, which, at the end of the last century and beginning of the present, was a much narrower street than it is now, is not, and never has been, a great book-emporium, for a reason which we have more than once pointed out. But the immediate vicinity has been for over a century and a half, as it still continues to be, the favourite locality of some of the chief booksellers. To-day the Strand proper only contains three representatives, in Messrs. H. Sotheran and Co., the finer of whose two shops is in Piccadilly, and Mr. David Nutt (both of whom are, however, vendors of new books, and often act as publishers), and Messrs. Walford. Within a stone's-throw of the main thoroughfare we have John Galwey and Suckling and Galloway, Garrick Street; James Gunn and Nattali, Bedford Street; B. F. Stevens, Trafalgar Square; H. Fawcett, King Street; W. Wesley and Sons, Essex Street; and many others. One of the most interesting incidents in connection with the Strand relates to a house which stood between Arundel and Norfolk Streets, where, at the end of the seventeenth century, lived the father of Bishop Burnet. 'This house,' says Dr. Hughson, writing in 1810, 'continued in the Burnet family till within living memory, being possessed by a bookseller of the same name--a collateral descendant of the Bishop.' Of much more importance, however, is the fact that at 132, Strand a bookseller named Wright started, about 1730, the first circulating library in London. About ten years afterwards he was succeeded by William Bathoe ('a very intelligent bookseller' who died in October, 1768), who carried on the circulating library in addition to bookselling. Bathoe was a book-auctioneer as well as a retail vendor; he sold the books of 'William Hogarth, Esq., sergeant-painter,' under the hammer. In or about the year 1747 he had established himself 'in Church Lane, near St. Martin's Church in the Strand, almost opposite York Buildings,' whence he issued a thirty-eight-paged (octavo) catalogue, comprising the 'valuable library of the learned James Thompson Esq., deceased, with the collection of a gentleman lately gone abroad'; this list enumerates nearly 1,000 items, the prices, ranging from 6d. upwards, being uniformly low. Walton's 'Compleat Angler,' 1661, 'with neat cuts,' would not be long unsold at 3s. 6d.; and the same may be said of Purchas's 'Pilgrimage,' 1617, 2s. 6d.; of Rochester's complete poems at 2s.; and very many others. At 'No. 18 in the Strand' lived J. Mathews, the bookseller, and father of Charles Mathews, the actor; and in this house the latter was born. Jacob Tonson was at 'Shakespeare's Head, over against Catherine Street, in the Strand,' now 141; the house, since rebuilt, was afterwards occupied by Andrew Millar, who deposed Shakespeare, and erected Buchanan's Head instead.