whether your own children inherit
the paternal susceptibility to their beauties, you make application to
the bookseller--but, behold, they have disappeared from existence as
entirely as the rabbits you fed, and the terrier that followed you with
his cheery clattering bark. Neither name nor description--not the
announcement of the benevolent publishers, "Darton, Harvey, and
Darton"--can recover the faintest traces of their vestiges.[61] Old
cookery-books, almanacs, books of prognostication, directories for
agricultural operations, guides to handicrafts, and other works of a
practical nature, are infinitely valuable when they refer to remote
times, and also infinitely rare.

[Footnote 61: I question if Toy Literature, as it may be called, has
received the consideration it deserves, when one remembers how great an
influence it must have on the formation of the infant mind. I am not
prepared to argue that it should be put under regulation--perhaps it is
best that it should be left to the wild luxuriance of nature--but its
characteristics and influence are surely worthy of studious observation.
It happened to me once to observe in the library of an eminent divine a
large heap of that class of works which used to be known as "penny
bookies." My reverend friend explained, in relation to them, that they
were intended to counteract some pernicious influences at work--that he
had made the important and painful discovery that the influence of this
class of literature had been noticed and employed by the enemies of the
Church. In confirmation of this view, he showed me some passages, of
which I remember the following:--

"B was a Bishop who loved his repose,
C was a Curate who had a red nose,"

D was a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think, however,
that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of religion and the
specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were mixed up with
childish prattle, was much more decorous or appropriate than what it was
intended to counteract.]

But of course the most interesting of all are the relics of pure
literature, of poems and plays. Whence have arisen all the anxious
searches and disappointments, and the bitter contests, and the rare
triumphs, about the early editions of Shakespeare, separately or
collectively, save from this, that they passed from one impatient hand
to another, and were subjected to an unceasing greedy perusal, until
they were at last u