[xxix-A] Mr. Stainforth's collection ranged over 300 years, and, amid much utter rubbish, there were a few things of considerable rarity, notably one of only three complete copies known of T. Bentley's 'Monument of Matrones,' 1582, formerly in the libraries of Herbert, Woodhouse, Heber and Bliss. It included two autograph letters of the Right Hon. T. Grenville, and realized L63; Anne Bradstreet's 'Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America,' 1650, L12 10s.; and a copy of Dame Juliana Berners' 'Booke of Hauking,' etc., L13. Nearly fifty items appear under the name of Aphra Behn; whilst there are twenty-one editions of Jane Porter's 'Poems,' which realized the grand total of 14s. The library comprised 3,076 lots (representing, perhaps, twenty times that number of volumes), and realized the total of L792 5s. [Illustration] THE BOOK-HUNTER IN LONDON EARLY BOOK-HUNTING. THOSE who have studied the earlier phases of English history will readily understand that the terms book-hunting in England and book-hunting in London are by no means synonymous. The passion for books had manifested itself in various and remote parts of this country long before London had developed into a place of importance; when, indeed, it was battling from without and within with conflicts which seemed to predict complete annihilation. But the growth of London is essentially typical of the growth of the nation, and of the formation of the national character. When it was laying the foundation of its future greatness London had no thought of intellectual pursuits, even if Londoners themselves had any conception of an intellectual life. For any trace of such unthought-of, and perhaps, indeed, unheard-of, articles as books, we must go to localities far remote from London--to spots where, happily, the strife and din of savage warfare scarcely made themselves heard. The monasteries were the sole repositories of literature; to the monk alone had the written book any kind of intelligence, any species of pleasure. To him it was as essential as the implements of destruction to the warrior, or the plough to the husbandman. The one had no sympathy, no connection, with the other, only in so far that the events which transpired in the battlefield had to be recorded in the _scriptorium_. Although London was a place of importance at a very early stage of the Roman occupation, it was not in any sense an intellectual centre for centuries after that period. [Illustration: _In a Scriptorium._]