f readers and collectors. You mount up one pair of stairs:--the
way is gloomy, and might well lead to a chamber in the monastery of La
Trappe. You then read an incription, which tells you that "in turning the
button you pull the bell." The bell sounds, and _Mons. Brunet, Pere_,
receives you--with, or without, a silken cap upon his head. He sits in a
small room, sufficiently well filled with books. "Is the Son at home?"
"Open that door, Sir, you will find him in the next room." The door is
immediately opened--and there sits the son, surrounded by, and almost
imprisoned in, papers and books. His pen is in his hand: his spectacles are
upon his nose: and he is transcribing or re-casting some precious little
bit of bibliographical intelligence; while, on looking up and receiving
you, he seems to be "full of the labouring God!" In short, he is just now
deeply and unintermittingly engaged in a new and _third_ edition of his
_Manuel_.[139] The shelves of his room almost groan beneath the weight of
those writers from whom he gathers his principal materials. "Vous voila,
Mons. Brunet, bien occupe!;" "Oui, Monsieur, cela me fait autant de plaisir
que de peine."

This is a very picture of the man.... "The labour we delight in physics
pain,"--said Lady Macbeth of old; and of a most extraordinary kind must the
labour of Mons. Brunet be considered, when the pleasure in the prosecution
of it balances the pain. We talked much and variously at our first
interview: having previously interchanged many civilities by letter, and
myself having been benefitted by such correspondence, in the possession of
a _large paper_ copy of his first edition--of which he was pleased to make
me a present, and of which only twenty copies were struck off. I told him
that I had given Charles Lewis a carte blanche for its binding, and that I
would back _his_ skill--the result of such an order--against any binding at
that time visible in any quarter of Paris! Mons. B. could not, in his
heart, have considered any other binding superior.

He told me, somewhat to my astonishment, and much to my gratification,
that, of the first edition of his _Manuel_, he had printed and sold _two
thousand_ copies. This could never have been done in our country: because,
doubting whether it would have been so accurately printed, it could never
have been published, in the same elegant manner, for the same price. The
charges of our printers would have been at least double. In the
typ