ep in his constitution--that it must have worked in some
shape--and well it is that it has taken one so innocuous--so may even
the book-hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate moral malady
of all the race in a very gentle and rather a salubrious form. To pass
over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily
spoken of in good society, let us look to the other shapes in which man
lets himself out--for instance to horse-racing, hunting, photography,
shooting, fishing, cigars, dog-fancying, dog-fighting, the ring, the
cockpit, phrenology, revivalism, socialism; which of these contains so
small a balance of evil, counting of course that the amount of pleasure
conferred is equal--for it is only on the datum that the book-hunter has
as much satisfaction from his pursuit as the fox-hunter, the
photographer, and so on, has in his, that a fair comparison can be
struck? These pursuits, one and all, leave little or nothing that is
valuable behind them, except, it may be, that some of them are conducive
to health, by giving exercise to the body and a genial excitement to the
mind; but every hobby gives the latter, and the former may be easily
obtained in some other shape. They leave little or nothing behind--even
the photographer's portfolio will bring scarcely anything under the
hammer after the death of him whose solace and pursuit it had been,
should the positives remain visible, which may be doubted. And as to the
other enumerated pursuits, some of them, as we all know, are immensely
costly, all unproductive as they are.

But the book-hunter may possibly leave a little fortune behind him. His
hobby, in fact, merges into an investment. This is the light in which a
celebrated Quaker collector of paintings put his conduct, when it was
questioned by the brethren, in virtue of that right to admonish one
another concerning the errors of their ways, which makes them so chary
in employing domestic servants of their own persuasion. "What had the
brother paid for that bauble [a picture by Wouvermans], for instance?"
"Well, L300." "Was not that then an awful wasting of his substance on
vanities?" "No. He had been offered L900 for it. If any of the Friends
was prepared to offer him a better investment of his money than one that
could be realised at a profit of 200 per cent, he was ready to alter the
existing disposal of his capital."

It is true that amateur purchasers do not, in the long-run, make a
profit, t