nd read. Peradventure the matter
so perused suggests another passage in some other volume which it will
be satisfactory and interesting to find, and so another and another
search is made, while the hours pass by unnoticed, and the day seems all
too short for the pursuit which is a luxury and an enjoyment, at the
same time that it fills the mind with varied knowledge and wisdom.

The fact is that the book-hunter, if he be genuine, and have his heart
in his pursuit, is also a reader and a scholar. Though he may be more or
less peculiar, and even eccentric, in his style of reading, there is a
necessary intellectual thread of connection running through the objects
of his search which predicates some acquaintance with the contents of
the accumulating volumes. Even although he profess a devotion to mere
external features--the style of binding, the cut or uncut leaves, the
presence or the absence of the gilding--yet the department in
literature holds more or less connection with this outward sign. He who
has a passion for old editions of the classics in vellum
bindings--Stephenses or Aldines--will not be put off with a copy of
Robinson Crusoe or the Ready Reckoner, bound to match and range with the
contents of his shelves. Those who so vehemently affect some external
peculiarity are the eccentric exceptions; yet even they have some
consideration for the contents of a book as well as for its coat.

The Collector and the Scholar.

Either the possession, or, in some other shape, access to a far larger
collection of books than can be read through in a lifetime, is in fact
an absolute condition of intellectual culture and expansion. The library
is the great intellectual stratification in which the literary
investigator works--examining its external features, or perhaps driving
a shaft through its various layers--passing over this stratum as not
immediate to his purpose, examining that other with the minute attention
of microscopic investigation. The geologist, the botanist, and the
zoologist, are not content to receive one specimen after another into
their homes, to be thoroughly and separately examined, each in
succession, as novel-readers go through the volumes of a circulating
library at twopence a-night--they have all the world of nature before
them, and examine as their scientific instincts or their fancies
suggest. For all inquirers, like pointers, have a sort of instinct,
sharpened by training and practice, the pow