pital, from the first
leaf to the colophon." Mr. Quaritch did not open a single book, but let
me look round his establishment, and answered my questions very
courteously. It so happened that while I was there a gentleman came in
whom I had previously met,--my namesake, Mr. Holmes, the Queen's
librarian at Windsor Castle. My ten minutes passed very rapidly in
conversation with these two experts in books, the bibliopole and the
bibliothecary. No place that I visited made me feel more thoroughly that
I was in London, the great central mart of all that is most precious in
the world.

_Leave at home all your guineas, ye who enter here_, would be a
good motto to put over his door, unless you have them in plenty and can
spare them, in which case _Take all your guineas with you_ would be
a better one. For you can here get their equivalent, and more than their
equivalent, in the choicest products of the press and the finest work of
the illuminator, the illustrator, and the binder. You will be sorely
tempted. But do not be surprised when you ask the price of the volume
you may happen to fancy. You are not dealing with a _bouquiniste_
of the Quais, in Paris. You are not foraging in an old book-shop of New
York or Boston. Do not suppose that I undervalue these dealers in old and
rare volumes. Many a much-prized rarity have I obtained from Drake and
Burnham and others of my townsmen, and from Denham in New York; and
in my student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or
an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets
of the quays. But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth
of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or "chipmunk" that
turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and
shooting partridges in a nobleman's preserves on the First of September.
I confess to having felt a certain awe on entering the precincts made
sacred by their precious contents. The lord and master of so many
_Editiones Principes_, the guardian of this great nursery full of
_incunabula_, did not seem to me like a simple tradesman. I felt that
I was in the presence of the literary purveyor of royal and imperial
libraries, the man before whom millionaires tremble as they calculate,
and billionaires pause and consider. I have recently received two of Mr.
Quaritch's catalogues, from which I will give my reader an extract or two,
to show him what kind of articles this prince of b