e houses and warehouses being literally crammed full from
top to bottom. There is scarcely any periodical or transactions of any
learned society which they are unable to complete, and in many
instances--_Punch_, for example--they have at least a dozen complete
sets, besides an infinity of odd numbers and parts. It is scarcely
necessary to point out that Messrs. George's business has very little to
do with the locality in which their shops are situated. They are the
wholesale firm of the trade, and the larger part of their business is
done in the United States and among the provincial booksellers of Great
Britain, ten huge cases and a complete set of Hansard being on the eve
of exportation to America at the time of our visit. It is a curious
fact, and one well worth mentioning, that until last year (1894) this
firm never issued a catalogue. It is also interesting to point out that
their shop at 76, Whitechapel Road is one of the most admirably arranged
bookstores in the country. It was specially constructed, and is not
unlike a miniature British Museum Reading-room; there are two galleries,
one above the other. The second East End worthy has a literary as well
as a bibliopolic interest. Joseph Smith will be better remembered by
posterity as the compiler of a 'Catalogue of Friends' Books,' and of the
'Bibliotheca Anti-Quakerana,' than as a bookseller. He was twenty years
compiling the former, and is perhaps one of the most striking
illustrations of the wisdom of the theory that the bookseller who wishes
to be a success should never read! Joseph Smith is of the Society of
Friends, and among his schoolfellows were John Bright and W. E. Forster.

Second-hand bookselling in the East End has declined during the past
quarter of a century from several causes, the chief and most important
being the almost complete withdrawal of moderately well-to-do people
from the locality. The neighbourhood has become so exclusively inhabited
by the poorest of the poor, and by the desolate immigrants from all
countries, that the higher phases of bookselling have little chance of
flourishing. Mr. E. George informs us that fifteen or twenty years ago
he frequently sold in one day books to the value of L15 to genuine
residents of the East End, but that he now does not sell fifteen
shillings' worth. So far as local customers are concerned, he might just
as well have nothing more elaborate than a warehouse.

Many interesting bookish events have, nev