beautiful copy of Forster's 'Life of Dickens,' enlarged from three
volumes octavo to nine volumes quarto, by taking to pieces,
remounting, and inlaying. It contains some eight hundred
engravings, portraits, views, playbills, title-pages, catalogues,
proof illustrations from Dickens's works, a set of the Onwhyn
plates, rare engravings by Cruikshank and 'Phiz,' and autograph
letters. Though this volume does not compare with Harvey's Dickens,
offered for $1750 two years ago, it is an excellent specimen of
books of this sort, and the veriest tyro in bibliographical affairs
knows how scarce are becoming the early editions of Dickens's works
and the plates illustrating them. {4} Anything about Dickens in the
beginning of his career is a sound investment from a business point
of view. Another work of the same sort, valued at $240, is Lady
Trevelyan's edition of Macaulay, illustrated with portraits, many of
them very rare. Even cheaper, all things considered, is an extra-
illustrated copy of the 'Histoire de la Gravure,' which, besides its
seventy-three reproductions of old engravings, is enriched with two
hundred fine specimens of the early engravers, many of the
impressions being in first and second states. At $155 such a book
is really a bargain, especially for any one who is forming a
collection of engravings. Another delightful work is the library
edition of Bray's 'Evelyn,' illustrated with some two hundred and
fifty portraits and views, and valued at $175; and still another is
Boydell's 'Milton,' with plates after Westall, and further
illustrations in the shape of twenty-eight portraits of the painter
and one hundred and eighty-one plates, and many of them before
letter. The price of this book is $325."

But few book-ghouls are worse than the moral ghoul. He defaces,
with a pen, the passages, in some precious volume, which do not meet