owner of many of Grolier's treasures, or M. Firmin-Didot 'the friend of all good books,' or the collections of Mr. Beckford and Baron Seilliere which have been in our own time dispersed. No doubt there is a tendency, especially among French amateurs, to regard books as mere curiosities; and M. Uzanne has drawn an amusing picture of the book-hunter as a chrysalis in his library, destined to find his wings in a flight after mosaic bindings, autographs, original water-colours, or plates in early states. It is possible, however, to prevent the 'book-buying disease' from developing into a general collector's mania. With the world full of books, we must adopt some special variety for our admiration. One person will choose his library companions for their stateliness and splendid raiment, another for their flavour of antiquity, or the fine company that they kept in old times. Montaigne loved his friends on the shelf, because they always received him kindly and 'blunted the point of his grief.' He turned the volumes over in his round tower within any method or design; 'at one while,' he says, 'I meditate, at another time I make notes, or dictate, as I walk up and down, such whimsies as meet you here.' He cared little about the look of their outsides, but thought a great deal about their readiness to divert him; 'it is the best _viaticum_ I have yet found out for this human pilgrimage, and I pity any man of understanding who is not provided with it.' We have omitted the best reason of all. One who has lived among his books will love them because they are his own. Marie Bashkirtseff expressed the matter well enough in a page of her journal:--'I have a real passion for my books, I arrange them, I count them, I gaze upon them: my heart rejoices in nothing but this heap of old books, and I like to stand off a little and look at them as if they were a picture.' CHAPTER XIII. LATER COLLECTORS: FRANCE--ITALY--SPAIN. We have still to notice one or two of Grolier's contemporaries, who may be classed as great book-collectors of an old-fashioned type. They knew the whole history of 'the Book,' and were themselves the owners of exquisite treasures, which are now hoarded up as the choicest remains of antiquity. But their function was not so much to collect books as rare and curious objects as to undertake the duty of saving the records of past history from destruction. They did the work in their day which has now devolved upon the guardians of public and national libraries. No private person could now take their place; but the interests of literature could hardly have been protected in a former age without the personal labour and enthusiasm of Orsini and Petau.