that the bibliomania has almost uniformly confined its attacks to the
_male_ sex, and among people in the higher and middling classes of
society. It has raged chiefly in palaces, castles, halls, and gay
mansions, and those things which in general are supposed not to be
inimical to health,--such as cleanliness, spaciousness, and splendour,
are only so many inducements to the introduction and propagation of
the bibliomania!"

It should be remembered, however, that one possessing a fondness for
books is not necessarily a bibliomaniac. There is as much difference
between the inclinations and taste of a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac
as between a slight cold and the advanced stages of consumption. Some
one has said that "to call a bibliophile a bibliomaniac is to conduct
a lover, languishing for his maiden's smile, to an asylum for the
demented, and to shut him up in the ward for the incurables." _Biblio_
relates to books, and _mania_ is synonymous with madness, insanity,
violent derangement, mental aberration, etc. A bibliomaniac,
therefore, might properly be called an insane or crazy bibliophile. It
is, however, a harmless insanity, and even in its worst stages it
injures no one. Rational treatment may cure a bibliomaniac and bring
him (or her) back into the congenial folds of bibliophilism, unless,
perchance, the victim has passed beyond the curative stages into the
vast and dreamy realms of extra-illustrating, or "grangerizing."
People usually have a horror of insane persons, and one might well
beware of indulging a taste for books, if there were any reasonable
probability that this would lead to mental derangement. There could be
furniture-maniacs, rug-maniacs, and china-maniacs just as well as
book-maniacs, but people do not generally hesitate to purchase
furniture, rugs, and china for fear of going crazy on the subject, and
no more reason is there why rational persons should hesitate to make a
collection of good books for a library, for fear of being called
bibliomaniacs. In _Sesame and Lilies_ Ruskin says: "If a man spends
lavishly on his library, you call him mad--a bibliomaniac. But you
never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by
their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by
their books."

This is preeminently the age of collectors, and scarcely a week passes
without the discovery of some new dementia in this direction. Only a
few days ago I read of a new delirium w