aim is educational or religious, we incline to the conclusion that
foreigners, and above all the French, are less practical than
ourselves, and lay far greater stress on sentiment.

The French, and we may perhaps add the Anglo-French school of
book-collecting, works on lines which to a normal lover of books must
at first appear rather mysterious and strange, if not absolutely
irrational. The closest analogy which it is in our power to suggest is
the almost parallel sentiment and policy in regard to other branches
of inquiry--china, furniture, numismatics. The Frenchman and his
English disciple have no respect whatever as _collectionneurs_ for
substantial value, and agree in ignoring everything, good, bad,
indifferent, outside a prescribed limit.

The temper of the foreign markets, especially the French one, is so
essentially different from that of England, that it demands an almost
life-long study of the subject to comprehend the true principles by
which they are guided and influenced. In what we are just now urging,
we must of course be understood to allude to the _amateur_ pure and
simple,--in fact, if it may be said without offence, to the virtuoso.
There are foreign book-collectors, as there are English, who seek
copies of works within their lines, whatever those lines may be, for
the sake of information and reference. The collector has no such aim.
He aspires to make himself master of so many items answering to
certain inexorable postulates laid down by the experts in such
matters. His taste has happened to take a bibliographical direction
and shape; it is hardly a literary one; and the objects of his
pursuit, instead of being pictures, prints, antiquities, gems, or
coins, are things in book-form.

Monsieur and his British satellite cultivate exclusively what is
French, just as in the numismatic department Monsieur will only buy
French coins or Franco-Italian ones, or the money of Monsieur's direct
ancestors, the Greeks and Romans. It is the same principle throughout;
and the undoubted fact is before us that, if the article to be sold is
right in all respects, the price is marvellous. One can understand a
high appreciation of some superb or unique example of ancient
typography, of a book which has belonged to a famous person, or of a
manuscript like the _Bedford Missal_ or the _Hours_ of Anne of
Brittany. One can understand, again, the enthusiasm for an unrecorded
old poem, romance, or play, for a production by