ing a fine collection of armorial seals was produced
at Brussels between 1897 and 1903. It was published in fifteen parts,
large octavo, and is entitled 'Sceaux Armoiries des Pays-bas et des Pays
avoisinants.' Lechaude-d'Anisy's 'Recueil des Sceaux Normands,' an oblong
quarto which appeared at Caen in 1834, is another of these handsome
books; but we have already lingered too long over this fascinating
heading.

[Sidenote: History.]

30. History is a somewhat wide subject, for it comprises descriptions of
any epoch or sequence of events in the existence of anything! We can read
histories of the Glacial Age or of Charles II, of the Quakers or
Tasmania, of the life of a cabbage or the Crimean War. Even a
dissertation on the development of the inkpot would be deemed history
nowadays. For the present, however, we will confine ourselves to that
branch of it which treats of the human element, nations and communities,
and events in their development. We must include travels, politics,
diaries, memoirs, and biographies, for all of these are indispensable
adjuncts. The voyages of Columbus, the Greville Papers, the Memoirs of
Fezensac, and the Paston Letters are no less history than Freeman's
'Norman Conquest,' Froude's 'Armada,' or Napier's 'Peninsular War.' It is
a student's subject, and as rational a branch of book-collecting as there
be. The collecting of early editions of the chroniclers, English or
foreign, is an interesting by-way. The series of British Chronicles
issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls is a fairly
complete one, and the works of many other early historians have been
published from time to time by the learned societies. A lengthy list of
bibliographies is given in Mr. Courtney's work, and there are useful
bibliographies at the end of each volume of the 'Cambridge Modern
History.'

Under this heading we will include 'Events'; such as the Armada, the
Great Fire of London, the Gordon Riots, the '45, but not, I think, the
French Revolution or the Napoleonic Era, the literatures of which are of
such magnitude as to demand separate headings. There are collections of
books on all these subjects and many similar ones which fall naturally
under the heading 'History.'

[Sidenote: Husbandry.]

31. The word 'husbandry' has an old-world flavour now: the classical
'agriculture' is preferred. It is a change, however, that we bookworms
and curious antiquaries in nowise relish. The old English or Scandina