Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous aspersions. Raleigh was a great favorite with him, and held indeed in especial respect, though not as the Patron of his old trade, as St. Crispin is of the Gentle Craft, yet as the founder of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore, that he should possess Sir Walter's History of the World, though he had never found inclination, or summoned up resolution, to undertake its perusal. Common sense has been defined by Sir Egerton Brydges, “to mean nothing more than an uneducated judgement, arising from a plain and coarse understanding, exercised upon common concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience, than by any regular process of the intellectual powers. If this,” he adds, “be the proper meaning of that quality, we cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation.” Except that there was no coarseness in his nature, this would apply to Mr. Allison. He had been bred up with the notion that it behoved him to attend to his business, and that reading formed no part of it. Nevertheless he had acquired some liking for books by looking casually now and then over the leaves of those unfortunate volumes with which the shop was continually supplied for its daily consumption. ——Many a load of criticism, Elaborate products of the midnight toil Of Belgian brains,[1] went there; and many a tome of old law, old physic, and old divinity; old history as well; books of which many were at all times rubbish; some, which though little better, would now sell for more shillings by the page than they then cost pence by the pound; and others, the real value of which is perhaps as little known now, as it was then. Such of these as in latter years caught his attention, he now and then rescued from the remorseless use to which they had been condemned. They made a curious assortment with his wife's books of devotion or amusement, wherewith she had sometimes beguiled, and sometimes soothed the weary hours of long and frequent illness. Among the former were Scott's “Christian Life,” Bishop Bayly's “Practice of Piety,” Bishop Taylor's “Holy Living and Dying,” Drelincourt on Death, with De Foe's lying story of Mrs. Veal's ghost as a puff preliminary, and the Night Thoughts. Among the latter were Cassandra, the Guardian and Spectator, Mrs. Rowe's Letters, Richardson's Novels and Pomfret's Poems. [Footnote 1: AKENSIDE.]