kind of sportive excitement. Bookstalls are not the only field of
the chase. Book catalogues, which reach the collector through the
post, give him all the pleasures of the sport at home. He reads the
booksellers' catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with
pencil, he writes by return of post, or he telegraphs to the vendor.
Unfortunately he almost always finds that he has been forestalled,
probably by some bookseller's agent. When the catalogue is a French
one, it is obvious that Parisians have the pick of the market before
our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M. Labitte. Still the
catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in bibliography. You see
from them how prices are ruling, and you can gloat, in fancy, over
De Luyne's edition of Moliere, 1673, two volumes in red morocco,
double ("Trautz Bauzonnet"), or some other vanity hopelessly out of
reach. In their catalogues, MM. Morgand and Fatout print a
facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition. The bust
of Moliere occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as
Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the "Precieuses Ridicules"), stand on
either side. In the second volume are Moliere, and his wife
Armande, crowned by the muse Thalia. A catalogue which contains
such exact reproductions of rare and authentic portraits, is itself
a work of art, and serviceable to the student. When the shop of a
bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over night, is
not too far distant, bibliophiles have been known to rush to the
spot in the grey morning, before the doors open. There are
amateurs, however, who prefer to stay comfortably at home, and pity
these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain outside a door in Oxford
Street or Booksellers' Row. There is a length to which enthusiasm
cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at rising early in the
morning. But, when we think of the sport of book-hunting, it is to
sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally turns. Here the