hness of its acquisition, that he took it with him to church, and,
turning up the text, handed it to a venerable woman beside him, after
the fashion of an absorbed and absent student who was apt to forget
whether he was reading Greek or English. The presiding genius of the
place, with his strange accent, odd sayings, and angular motions,
accompanied by good-natured grunts of grotesque wrath, became a sort of
household figure. The dorsal breadth of pronunciation with which he
would expose Mr Ivory's Erskine, used to produce a titter which he was
always at a loss to understand. Though not the fashionable mart where
all the thorough libraries in perfect condition went to be hammered
off--though it was rather a place where miscellaneous collections were
sold, and therefore bargains might be expected by those who knew what
they were about--yet sometimes extraordinary and valuable collections of
rare books came under his hammer, and created an access of more than
common excitement among the denizens of the place. On one of these
occasions a succession of valuable fragments of early English poetry
brought prices so high and far beyond those of ordinary expensive books
in the finest condition, that it seemed as if their imperfections were
their merit; and the auctioneer, momentarily carried off with this
feeling, when the high prices began to sink a little, remonstrated thus,
"Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen,--this curious book--so low
as thirty shillings--and _quite imperfect_!"

Those who frequented this howf, being generally elderly men, have now
nearly all departed. The thunderer's hammer, too, has long been
silenced by the great quieter. One living memorial still exists of that
scene--the genial and then youthful assistant, whose partiality for
letters and literary pursuits made him often the monitor and kindly
guide of the raw student, and who now, in a higher field, exercises a
more important influence on the destinies of literature. I passed the
spot the other day--it was not desolate and forsaken, with the moss
growing on the hearthstone; on the contrary, it flared with many
lights--a thronged gin-palace. When one heard the sounds that issued
from the old familiar spot, the reflection not unnaturally occurred
that, after all, there are worse pursuits in the world than
book-hunting.

Classification.

Perhaps it would be a good practical distribution of the class of
persons under examination, to di