certain age or of a special interest are exorbitantly dear. Men like Mr.
James Lenox used to keep the market up. One cannot get the Jesuit
"Relations"--shabby little missionary reports from Canada, in dirty
vellum.

Cartier, Perrot, Champlain, and the other early explorers' books are
beyond the means of a working student who needs them. May _you_ come
across them in a garret of a farmhouse, or in some dusty lane of the
city. Why are they not reprinted, as Mr. Arber has reprinted "Captain
John Smith's Voyages, and Reports on Virginia"? The very reprints, when
they have been made, are rare and hard to come by.

There are certain modern books, new books, that "go up" rapidly in value
and interest. Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta" of 1865, the quarto in white
cloth, is valued at twenty dollars. Twenty years ago one dollar would
have purchased it. Mr. Austin Dobson's "Proverbs in Porcelain" is also
in demand among the curious. Nay, even I may say about the first edition
of "Ballades in Blue China" (1880), as Gibbon said of his "Essay on the
Study of Literature:" "The primitive value of half a crown has risen to
the fanciful price of a guinea or thirty shillings," or even more. I
wish I had a copy myself, for old sake's sake.

Certain modern books, "on large paper," are safe investments. The
"Badminton Library," an English series of books on sport, is at a huge
premium already, when on "large paper." But one should never buy the
book unless, as in the case of Dr. John Hill Burton's "Book-Hunter"
(first edition), it is not only on large paper, and not only rare (twenty-
five copies), but also readable and interesting. {7} A collector should
have the taste to see when a new book is in itself valuable and charming,
and when its author is likely to succeed, so that his early attempts (as