and hand it down or on to others. Editions of 1860-50-40, and
older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study
or reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a
dozen second-hand booksellers in his own district in London.
There will be tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and
new, but few guidebooks--in some cases not one. If you ask
your man at a venture for, say, a guide to Hampshire, he will
most probably tell you that he has not one in stock; then, in
his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps, fish out a guide
to Derbyshire, dated 1854--a shabby old book--and offer it
for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabbe in eight
volumes, or of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound
in calf. Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they
will tell you that there is always a sale for guide-books
--that the supply does not keep pace with the demand. It may be
taken as a fact that most of the books of this kind published
during the last half-century--many millions of copies in the
aggregate--are still in existence and are valued possessions.

There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we
run about a great deal; and having curious minds we naturally
wish to know all there is to be known, or all that is
interesting to know, about the places we visit. Then, again,
our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole matter
--history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood,
etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well
enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the
magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is
taken home to serve another purpose, to be a help to memory,
and nobody can have it until its owner removes himself (but