d limited; and continual
use and subsequent neglect accomplished between them the task of
creating the modern bibliographical and bibliomaniacal schools.

Even in Anglo-Saxon times the ferocity of warfare and the ravages of
invasion on invasion, coupled with the scanty diffusion of literary
taste, destroyed many of the monastic libraries. But, which is
stranger and less excusable, even down to the second half of the
seventeenth century, down to Aubrey's day, the greatest havoc
continued to be made in this way alike among printed books and MSS.,
the latter being used for all sorts of utilitarian purposes--even as
bungs for beer-barrels. In our own period it is immeasurably sadder
and more astonishing to learn that, besides the losses arising from
casual conflagrations to public and private libraries, the old
vandalism is not extinct, and that nothing is sacred in its eyes, not
even the priceless muniments of a cathedral church.

What must the aggregate have become, if such a process had not been
steadily in operation all these centuries! And, even as it is, the
dispersion of old libraries, like those of Johnson of Spalding and
Skene of Skene, encourages the waste-paper dealer to believe that the
end is not yet reached. The frequenter of the auction-rooms of London
alone has perpetually under his eyes a mountain of illegible printed
matter sufficient to overload the shoulders of Atlas.

Bibliomania has as many heads as the famed Briareus; but it seldom
lifts more than two or three at once. Perhaps it would be impossible
to name any variety of fancy which has not at some time entered into
the pursuit which we are just now attempting to illustrate. The love
of the book without regard to the binding, or of the binding
irrespectively of the book; the fashion for works with woodcuts, of
certain printers, of certain places, of certain dates; the
establishment of a fixed rule as to a subject or a group of subjects,
taken up collectively or in succession; a limitation as to price or as
to size, for a candidate for admittance to some cabinets may not
exceed so many inches in altitude; it must go back to the century
which produced it, to be rewritten or reprinted, ere it may have a
place.

It is said of the elder Wertheimer that, when some one expressed his
astonishment at the price which he had given for an item, and even
insinuated his want of wisdom, he retorted pleasantly that he might be
a fool, but he thought that he kne