various ventures in this line totalled up to nearly a couple of
hundred. _The Stamp Collectors' Magazine_, started in 1863, may be
said to survive in Alfred Smith and Son's _Monthly Circular; The
Philatelic Record_, established in 1879, is now in its twenty-fourth
yearly volume; Gibbons' _Monthly Journal_ is in its twelfth yearly
volume; and _The London Philatelist_ is in its eleventh yearly volume;
and all may be said to be going strong. How many ordinary periodicals
can boast of equally robust lives? And yet some people are still to be
found who speak in all seriousness of stamp collecting as only a
passing craze.

Properly speaking, tradesmen's catalogues can scarcely be regarded as
literature, and yet it would be very remiss on my part to close this
chapter without a reference to the excellent catalogues with which
stamp collectors are provided. What other hobby can boast of such
comprehensive and detailed catalogues, giving the actual selling price
of almost every item, and regularly revised and brought up to date
from year to year? Messrs. Stanley Gibbons' Priced Catalogue is
comprised in four volumes:--Part I., The British Empire, 244 pages;
Part II., Foreign Countries, 458 pages; Part III., Local Postage
Stamps, 122 pages; Part IV., Envelopes, Post Cards, and Wrappers, 317
pages; in all, 1,141 closely printed double-column pages of small
type, with thousands of illustrations. This excellent catalogue is at
once guide, philosopher, and friend to the stamp collector. Some
people irreverently style it "the Philatelist's Bible." It does not
profess to be anything more or less than a mere catalogue of goods for
sale, but it is an open secret that it represents the combined work
and the combined knowledge of the best Philatelists of the day, and
that neither trouble nor expense is spared to include within its pages
everything that a collector needs to know to enable him to gather his