gues with new.

Nothing but American competition, grumble some old stagers.

Well! why not? This new battle for the books is a free fight, not a
private one, and Columbia has "joined in." Lower prices are not to be
looked for. The book-buyer of 1900 will be glad to buy at to-day's
prices. I take pleasure in thinking he will not be able to do so. Good
finds grow scarcer and scarcer. True it is that but a few short weeks
ago I picked up (such is the happy phrase, most apt to describe what
was indeed a "street casualty") a copy of the original edition of
_Endymion_ (Keats's poem--O subscriber to Mudie's!--not Lord
Beaconsfield's novel) for the easy equivalent of half-a-crown--but
then that was one of my lucky days. The enormous increase of
booksellers' catalogues and their wide circulation amongst the trade
has already produced a hateful uniformity of prices. Go where you will
it is all the same to the odd sixpence. Time was when you could map
out the country for yourself with some hopefulness of plunder. There
were districts where the Elizabethan dramatists were but slenderly
protected. A raid into the "bonnie North Countrie" sent you home again
cheered with chap-books and weighted with old pamphlets of curious
interests; whilst the West of England seldom failed to yield a crop of
novels. I remember getting a complete set of the Bronte books in the
original issues at Torquay, I may say, for nothing. Those days are
over. Your country bookseller is, in fact, more likely, such tales
does he hear of London auctions, and such catalogues does he receive
by every post, to exaggerate the value of his wares than to part with
them pleasantly, and as a country bookseller should, "just to clear my
shelves, you know, and give me a bit of room." The only compensation
for this is the catalogues themselves. You get _them_, at least, for
nothing, and it cannot be denied that they make mighty pretty reading.

These high prices tell their own tale, and force upon us the
conviction that there never were so many private libraries in course
of growth as there are to-day.

Libraries are not made; they grow. Your first two thousand volumes
present no difficulty, and cost astonishingly little money. Given L400
and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course,
without undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround
himself with this number of books, all in his own language, and
thenceforward have at least one place i