The circulating library itself, though not the creation of the novel, was very largely extended by it, and helped no doubt very largely to extend the circulation of the novel in turn. Before it, to some extent, and long before so-called "public" or "free" libraries, books in general and novels in particular had been very largely diffused by clubs, "institutions," and other forms of co-operative individual enterprise, the bookplates of which will be found in many a copy of an old novel now. Sometimes these were purely private associations of neighbours: sometimes they belonged to more or less extensive establishments, like that defunct "Russell Institution in Great Coram Street," which a great author, who was its neighbour, once took for an example of desolation; or the still existing and flourishing "Philosophical" examples in Edinburgh and Bath. In these latter cases, of course, novels were not allowed to be the main constituents of the library; in fact in some, but few, they may have been sternly excluded. On the other hand, the private-adventure circulating libraries tended more and more, with few exceptions, to rely on novels only--"Mudie's" and a few more being exceptions. Very few people, I suppose, ever bought three-volume novels; and the fact that they went almost wholly to the libraries, and were there worn to pieces, accounts for the comparative rarity of good copies. The circulating library has survived both the decease of the three-volume novel and the competition of the so-called free library. But it is pretty certain that it was a chief cause--and almost the whole _sustaining_ cause--of the three-volume system itself. Nor was the connection between nature of form and system of distribution limited to England: for the single-volume novel, though older in France than with us, is not so very old. But a very considerable proportion of these famous books made appearances previous to that in three volumes, and not distantly connected with their popularity. For the most part these previous appearances were either in magazines or periodicals of one kind and another, or else in "parts."