s then discovered that the circumstances of the family
require his treasures to be dispersed,--if then the result should take
the unexpected shape that his pursuit has not been so ruinously costly
after all--nay, that his expenditure has actually fructified--it is
well. But if the book-hunter allow money-making--even for those he is to
leave behind--to be combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh
relish, its exhilarating influence, and becomes the source of wretched
cares and paltry anxieties. Where money is the object, let a man
speculate or become a miser--a very enviable condition to him who has
the saving grace to achieve it, if we hold with Byron that the
accumulation of money is the only passion that never cloys.

Let not the collector, therefore, ever, unless in some urgent and
necessary circumstances, part with any of his treasures. Let him not
even have recourse to that practice called barter, which political
philosophers tell us is the universal resource of mankind preparatory to
the invention of money as a circulating medium and means of exchange.
Let him confine all his transactions in the market to purchasing only.
No good ever comes of gentlemen amateurs buying and selling. They will
either be systematic losers, or they will acquire shabby, questionable
habits, from which the professional dealers--on whom, perhaps, they look
down--are exempt. There are two trades renowned for the quackery and the
imposition with which they are habitually stained--the trade in horses
and the trade in old pictures; and these have, I verily believe, earned
their evil reputation chiefly from this, that they are trades in which
gentlemen of independent fortune and considerable position are in the
habit of embarking.

The result is not so unaccountable as it might seem. The professional
dealer, however smart he may be, takes a sounder estimate of any
individual transaction than the amateur. It is his object, not so much
to do any single stroke of trade very successfully, as to deal
acceptably with the public, and make his money in the long-run. Hence he
does not place an undue estimate on the special article he is to dispose
of, but will let it go at a loss, if that is likely to prove the most
beneficial course for his trade at large. He has no special attachment
to any of the articles in which he deals, and no blindly exaggerated
appreciation of their merits and value. They come and go in an equable
stream, and the cargo o