copies sold, it
does not throw as many, or indeed any, copies of the old book out of
circulation: it supersedes nothing. If any man can indulge in the luxury
of a new up-to-date guide to any place, and gets rid of his old one
(a rare thing to do), this will be snapped up by poorer men, who will
treasure it and hand it down or on to others. Editions of 1860-50-40,
and older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study
or reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a dozen
second-hand booksellers in his own district in London. There will
be tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and new, but few
guidebooks--in some cases not one. If you ask your man at a venture for,
say, a guide to Hampshire, he will most probably tell you that he has
not one in stock; then, in his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps,
fish out a guide to Derbyshire, dated 1854--a shabby old book--and offer
it for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabbe in eight volumes,
or of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound in calf. Talk to
this man, and to the other eleven, and they will tell you that there is
always a sale for guide-books--that the supply does not keep pace with
the demand. It may be taken as a fact that most of the books of this
kind published during the last half-century--many millions of copies in
the aggregate--are still in existence and are valued possessions.

There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we run about a
great deal; and having curious minds we naturally wish to know all there
is to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places we
visit. Then, again, our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole
matter--history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood,
etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well enough; but
it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the magazines; however
cheap and badly got up it may be, it is taken home to serve another
purpose, to be a help to memory, and nobody can have it until its owner
removes himself (but not his possessions) from this planet; or until
the broker seizes his belongings, and guide-books, together with other
books, are disposed of in packages by the auctioneer.

In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us, and that
there is little or no fault to be found with them, since even the worst
give some guidance and enable us in after times mentally to revisit
di