advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk about a book. III THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind. First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language, specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country would like.