years, then went to Paris for a year's employment in a French house, after which he returned to Bohn's for two years more, and finally, left him in 1847. He had thus had nearly thirteen years' experience as an employee. In all those years he was absent from his duties for only one week, and that was in consequence of an illness during his aprenticeship. He was never away from work more than the few days consumed in the journeys from Nordhausen to Berlin, from Berlin to London, from London to Paris, and from Paris back again to London.

In April, 1847, Quaritch began business for himself as an agent at 63 Great Russell street, with a capital of £70, but owing to a dispute with Bohn he changed his office October 15, 1847, and took a small shop at 16 Castle Street at a weekly rental of 16 shillings. That house is now his freehold property and is used as a warehouse.

In Castle Street his untiring industry, coupled with exceptional business aptitude, produced corresponding but unexpected results. His progress was marvelous and surprised everybody. He worked day and night, and soon developed from a stallkeeper selling penny books into one of the leading second-hand dealers of London.

As we have already said, he always had such unbounded confidence in his own success that in the earlier days of his employment by Bohn, who used him as a porter and paid him 24 shillings a week, Quaritch said to him, "Ah! Mr. Bohn, you are the first bookseller in England; I mean to become the first bookseller in Europe." How perfectly he realized this youthful boast is now a matter of history. During the last year of his stay at Bohn's Quaritch compiled the only printed volume of Bohn's 1847 Classified Catalogue. The following November saw the first of his own great series of catalogues: it was entitled "Quaritch's Cheap Book Circular," and consisted of a single leaf, containing 400 titles printed in three columns. From his Castle Street shop alone Quaritch issued, from 1847 to 1860, 157 catalogues. Since then he has issued catalogues unceasingly, all of them remarkable for the richness of their contents.

In March, 1860, Quaritch removed to his now famous quarters at 15 Piccadilly, one of the most attractive spots in the world for bibliophiles. As a buyer Mr. Quaritch is intrepidity itself, and he fairly deserves the epithet of "the Napoleon of bibliophiles." He would have the best at whatever cost, even if he be obliged eventually to sell his treasure at cost price. Speaking broadly, money-making seems never to have entered his head, as is proven by his statement that "there is no man who has lost more from unfortunate purchases than I have."

To sum up, however briefly, his great purchases would occupy more space than is at the writer's command. A few instances, therefore must suffice. At the Sunderland sale he bought up to £32,000,

and at the Hamilton sale his total outlay was nearly £40,000. At the sale of the Ashburnham library Quaritch was the heaviest buyer, and succeeded in capturing the rarest treasures, including the famous vellum Gutenberg Bible. The highest price paid by him for a single volume was £4950 for the "Psalter," printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1459.

Quaritch's name was almost exclusively connected with the old-book trade; but he was known also as a publisher, as a dealer in new English books, and as an importer. An important feature of his business; and one of which the public and the trade knew next to nothing, was his trade in periodicals -that is the transactions of learned societies and scientific periodicals.

Probably a quarter of the rare books in American public and private collections in 1879 had passed through his hands; at this time of writing, twenty years later, it may be said that over one-half of the most valuable books here were at one time and another in his possession. More than a third of the best things in Brayton Ives's splendid library, sold in 1891, were secured, for example, from Quaritch. It will be seen from this that his relations to American book collecting were peculiarly important. He sent over in 1890 for exhibition and sale a wonderful collection of book rarities, but the principle items of value, including the Psalter of 1459, went back to Europe unsold.

Even at the English sales of the fifties, Quaritch's name was one to reckon with; a little latter he was the acknowledged leader at all London and Continental book auctions, and most of the collections that were disposed of privately came to him.

Name,

if you will, the chief sales abroad from 1860 to 1899 -the Charlemont, the Daniel, the Perkins, the Tite, the Laing, the Didot, the Sunderland, the Hamilton Palace, the Jersey, the Way, the Beckford, the Thorold, the Woodhull, the Selliere, the Turner, and the Ashburnham auctions—what a list of triumphs for him! The catalogues he issued describing his acquisitions from these sales were in many instances bibliographical masterpieces, and have the greatest possible value. In their preparation Quaritch had the assistance of Michael Kerney, the most accomplished bibliographer in Europe today. When he died two parts of "A Catalogue of the Literature and History of the British Islands" had appeared. What will become of his stock of valuable books is not known. He did not die a rich man, for it is not given to any one to make a fortune out of rare books, but he passed away the first of all booksellers.

His social relations were practically unimportant. In 1878 he helped to found "The Sette of Odd Volumes," one of the most successful of literary societies, and was President in 1878, 1879, and 1882, and long its Librarian. He delivered several addresses before the "sette," to one of which (“An Account of the Great Learned Societies and Associations," published in 1886) is prefixed a portrait of this talented man who was such a force in the bookselling history of the century.

AMONG MY BOOKS.

I think it was Robert Louis Stevenson who said that he had more interest in, and received more quick pleasure from, a dictionary than any other book. In this I can sympathise. There is so great a flood of books, but the little infinite stream of words has its own separate and mysterious course. There is an ancient Celtic legend about the transformations of Tuan mac Cairill: and in his final change Tuan tells us, through the mouth of a forgotten shenachie, "sleep fell upon me, and I passed into the shape of a river salmon there and then. Then God put me into the river so that I was in it. Once more I felt happy and was vigorous and well fed, and my swimming was good, and I used to escape from every danger and from every snare-to wit, from the hands of fishermen, and from the claws of hawks, and from fishing spears-so that the scars which each one of them left are still on me." Fond as he was of decorative narrative, I do not suppose this early Gael (companion in modesty to Maclean of the Ark-for Tuan avers that he enjoyed life on Erin, several lives, before even the Tuatha de Danann, the Gods of the Gael, appeared) was an author in our sense of the word; but he has set us an allegory worthy of remembrance. God puts many of us into the river so that we are in it: and whether we be vigorous and well fed, or for good reasons be not so, we consider our swimming good. But the current of this narrow fathomless stream, so fairshining yet so darkly mysterious, is swift and treacherous; the flow is deep; its whispering is fatal for all but a few. Who are the fishermen but those eager death-anglers whom Tuan would have called publishers, had there been any publishers in his day; the claws of hawks, are they not the sharp quills of critics; and the fishing-spears, what are they but the ever-varying vogues and fashions of a little hour? Yes, I am sure Tuan, accomplished story-teller as he was, once he became the salmon of knowledge (and of old the "salmon of knowledge" meant prescience) foresaw the swimmer-crowded stream of words, the endless backwaters, stagnant pools, and limitless floods of books.

But sometimes one can follow a dry way, and come upon green banks, and through whispering reeds look into sparkling sunswept water, every moulded flowing wave of which, however glitteringly ashine, hides dim mysterious depths of ancient days, august memories, forgotten dreams, old thoughts, and all the infinite multitude of . words.

But there are dictionaries and dictionaries. There I love to go a-fishing: to angle for sudden surprises, for familiar words changed to a new poetry, for nimble meanings alive still through all common use. Give me a good etymological dictionary, a not too bulky Larousse, a Gaelic or a Breton wordbook: and I will not envy Tuan his transformations,

or have to weary either for fresh interest, sudden excitements, new vistas, byways, perspectives. There is an infinite wisdom, too, in these little words, with their quick, mysterious life. Is there not humor in definitions? I find enough and to spare, with many delightful if sometimes bittersmiled ironies. Then there are lexicographers who do not disdain individual comment. What pleasing assurance is there in the Highland dictionary-maker who says of the Gaelic word for five, coig, that in many outlandish places it is mispronounced "cueg" instead of "koeg"; but in the islands of Argyll this and every word is pronounced just as Adam spoke it"! It is painful, too, to learn from the same authority that cogais, which in the lesser isles stands for a prodigious, red, carbuncled nose, and in Skye is "just a nose," is, "in some parishes of the continent of Argyll and Perthshire, conscience." But worse to learn further that "in the shape of conscience it is only applied to the male sex." Here be bitter wonder, as an old Scottish Divine has it. This particular dictionary, however, should not be read south the Highland line. Will the proud Sassunnach stomach an interpolation such as this under folachd; "iseal am folachd, of a base extraction such as every person that is not Highland"?

But, to return, there are dictionaries and dictionaries and among them is one of delightful variety, that of national proverbs. True, there is an amazing congruity between the most familiar wise saws of all nations, but there are endless variations full of color, life, and delightful significance. When a Persian says, "Better a rose with the morning dew on it than seven lovelier roses that are already pluckt," he says beautifully what the Eskimo says crudely in, "A mouthful of new blubber is better than an old barrelful."

And among my books I have one or two wherein I can at any time find entertainment-collections of Gaelic and other Celtic proverbs.

Sometimes the interest is in finding the same idea similarly set forth among divers peoples. Thus the Gaelic, "Coinnichidh na daoine ged nach coinnich na cnuic" is but an echo of the Scottish, "We'll meet ere hills meet"; the English, "Friends may meet, but mountains never greet"; the Welsh, "Cynt y cwrdd dan ddyn na dan lan" (sooner will two men meet than two banks); the French, "Two men may meet, but never two hills"; and the Greek, "Mountain doesn't meet mountain." Again the universal dread of the law's uncertainty is reflected alike in the Gaelic, "Cordadh a réubas reachd," or in the homely Scots, "Law's costly: tak' a pint an' gree," as in the Italian,:"Meglio un magro accordo, che una grassa senlinza," and the corresponding French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Danish versions.

Sometimes the pleasure is in humorous observation of common frailties: as this badinage to senti

mental people who keep up too long the remembrance of anything-"Is fhada tha bas do sheanamhair 'n ad chuimhne!" "Your grandmother's death is long in your memory!"; or, again, "The wren spreads his feet wide in his own house." Then, too, there is a fund of more or less delightful similes and metaphors. Sometimes these take one far back, as in the Argyll saying, "Cho aluinn ri Aghaidhshneachda," "as lovely as Snow-face," a phrase known in old-time Highland story long before Macpherson introduced the name as Agandecca. Some of these common proverbial similes are quaint-for example, "as deaf as a goose in autumn," or "as unsteady as an egg on a stick," but more convey the innate poetry of the Gael, or closely reflect familiar natural things-for example, "as blind as an ox in mist," or "as well acquainted as the oyster-catcher is with the shore." But how charming are "as sweet to hear as a mavis on a bough"; "as white as the one night's snow" (I have heard this used by a mother of her dead child-"cho geal ri sneachd na h-aon oidche"); the often heard "cho gorach ris na h-eoin," as thoughtless as the birds; "as noisy as the wind"; "as swift as the wavetops"; "all one way, as the grain with the wind"; the ancient "as swift as the elks," and so forth.

If there are many Highland sayings to be found in any proverb dictionary, illustrative of the vehement independence of the Gael-for example, "Donald as good as John, and John as good as Donald "-there are others which show how keenly the clansmen discriminate the advantages of good birth, as in the saying, "one man needs but to be born, another to be born and bred."

But perhaps to a Highlander there is a special malacious pleasure in the recurrent sayings against

members of other clans. All but men of Mull or Islay will enjoy the quatrain beginning, "Muileach 'us Ileach 'us deamhan," which sets forth that the Mull man, the Islay man, and the devil are the three worst in creation: the Islay man being worse than the devil, and the man of Mull worse than

him of Islay. There are so many sayings against Mull that one is sure they must be canny douce folk! Inlanders, for sure, who traduced Mull, Coll and Tiree, thus: "What the Mull man sees, he covets; what the Mull man covets, the Coll man steals; and what the Coll man steals, the Tiree man hides." Perhaps only Highlanders can appreciate such saws as "Campbell honey," "the dry feet of the Mackintoshes," "ask anything of a Cameron but butter," "watch a Macleod," "by the light of Macfarlane's lantern," and so forth. But here one treads perilous ground. Be sparing of Cameron's way ("wry-mouth ") with all the Highlands before one as one might say paraphrasing the Gaelic phrase of an old man on his way to a Falkirk tryst with his son, who had a little more of the English than himself, and had begun to air it at Dumbarton,

"Be sparing of the little English, with the whole Lowlands in front of us!" Well, the clansmen had and have their byplay one with the other; but any who will may hunt the proverb dictionary and find below all the record of give and take a hundred sayings of the dauntless heroism of his forbears, the common heritage of the Gael. Fair play, in the old Highland way-a good, if a savage way.

But the paramount value of this-as, in truth of all dictionaries-is that the hunter may be sure of quarry, at all time, at all seasons, whether his quest be knowledge, amusement, or those sudden green lanes, those blue waterways, those little magical gates into wonderland which, like the stars and flowers, are so much with us that we treat them, "mere words," over-familiarly; and as though we, and not they, were the stronger. For this at least is sure that we go, and they remain.

FIONA MACLEOD in Literature.

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BOOKS THAT LIVE.

The gossip that naturally followed the death of Grant Allen revived the memory of a curious controversy. Somebody dared, soon after the publication of "The Woman Who Did," to cite it as a most unholy book-a standard or touchstone of indecency. That riled Andrew Lang, who went to work seriously to show that if Grant Allen was indecent, so by the same reasoning, was John Milton, author of a forgotten work called "Paradise Lost," and there was quite a furious controversy over the thing. A few years pass, and "The Woman Who Did" is just as dead as if she did nothing. Nobody cares whether the thing was decent or indecent; it's just dead, and that's all there is to it. From which the critic might learn a lesson-the wholesome, sad lesson that not two books in a generation outside of the ever-comforting new-fact books ever matter a rap. One writes one's little book, and kicks up one's little dust, and the critics say their little say; and then merciful oblivion sets in. As one's self

gives up the ghost, a brief flicker of life stirs in one's dead tomes. Then comes the final quiet. It's a foolish little business, this average book writing, and a mighty funny one, this serious criticising. How the dead authors in their own particular circle must chuckle over the absurd row they raised in their day. Criterion.

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MINNESOTA'S FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK. The first book ever printed in Minnesota was a Bible, and that was printed in 1836, some 13 years before the first issue of a newspaper in St. Paul. The Bible was in the Ojibway language and was printed on the mission press at Lake Pokegama, Pine County, under the supervision of Rev. Mr. Ayer.

"BOOKS. I BEST REMEMBER.”

Ever since I left off my fairy stories and got beyond "The Yellow Dwarf" and "The Goose Girl," I have had a bad habit of reading novels and memoirs. Fortunately I fell upon Miss Austen early, and my passion for her quiet and assured elegance saved me from being swamped by Bulwer's sentimentality, Disraeli's excess, and Capt. Marryat's rather coarse fun-not to speak of Mrs. Gore, whose stories of London society had a great fascination for the little girl in many a New Hampshire Winter, who was apt to be shut up in a library with a good fire and a very miscellaneous crop of the latest products of the London press, no matter what they

were.

During that time of literary license I read "Ernest Maltravers," by Bulwer, which I still think a most fascinating novel, although I have heard that it is immoral. I read also with great pleasure Disraeli's "Vivian Grey" and Bulwer's "Pelham," and I wish some one would write anything as good as these seemed then. I read "Henrietta Temple," the most romantic and absurd love story ever written, and later on I read "Coningsby" and "Lothair." Mr. Howells and everybody else may say they are in "poor style." I do not agree with these views. I think those were beautiful stories. As for "Zanoni," to a young and romantic girl that was what Rossini's music was to the lover of melodies before Wagner came. Bulwer (a most unequal writer) need only have given "The Last Days of Pompeii" to the world to prove that he was a man of genius, and his "Kenelm Chillingly" is a novel which I am willing to be shut up with in a country inn, of a rainy day, any time.

Walter Scott was the basis of my education, and I had the further instructions of dear Miss Austen, whose "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma," "Persuasion," and "Sense and Sensibility" might well console a life prisoner. Also I read the witty Miss Ferrier, whose novels of "Marriage" and the "Inheritance" Walter Scott said he would gladly have written. How I turn back to them now-those witty and wise character sketches-when my few

moments of leisure leave me time to reread a novel ! I turn to them when the slip-shop of the present day (with a few glorious exceptions) comes in my way, and I begin to feel that the art of the portrait painter and the novelist belonged to those past celebrities, and that they hold a sceptre which has not descended to modern hands.

I read in those days Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" with great delight, and I dare say I did not understand a word of it; but it was a book, and something told me that it was great. I was like the rustic who was brought in to the dinner of the great lord who had a famous French cook, and who devoured "filet de boeuf" and "pate de foie gras" with the same zest with which he had eaten plain

boiled beef, to the disgust of the educated gourmet, who said, "Pearls before swine." Perhaps the poor fellow did not enjoy the boiled beef as well afterward.

Every week then in my youth brought us a little green-covered book, by one Charles Dickens, and a little yellow-covered book by one Thackeray. Presently Thackery began to make fun of Bulwer, and I perceived that there was a possibility that my favorite author, my "Ernest Maltravers," was a little too fond of "The Beautiful," with a large B, and when "Vanity Fair" came out I dropped my Bulwer for awhile, and I have never since been able to read with as much pleasure the sentimentalities of either Bulwer or Disraeli while that powerful satirist lies on the table.

"Vanity Fair" is reading for all time and all conditions of men. It is an epigram from cover to cover. It is the embodied wisdom of the worldly life, while the books of Dickens contrasted with it are the poems of humanity, the protest of poverty, the cry of the heart.

How I wish I could read "Master Humphrey's Clock" once more with the heart of fourteen, the eager, uneducated, spasmodic vision of that day when, no longer a child and not yet a woman, I stood with "reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet." Perhaps for the reason that I did read it then I love it better than all the greater works of the great novelist. I see myself the little shivering girl, sitting in the window which looked west, to catch the last rays of the wintry sun which feebly struggled through the snowflakes, as Quilp pursued the hapless pair who were to be rescued by Kit, God bless him!

But there was coming along the more intense delight of a plunge into love's mysteries, and "Jane Eyre" rose like a comet above the serene heaven. This great book, one of the greatest ever written in any language, was to me the introduction into a new world. For a time it swept away everything else. I trembled over it. I do still. I read it once a year for its clear, pellucid English, its tranquil English landscape, its tragic and eloquent secret, its surprises, and its Eastern wealth of passion. How I should like to go even now and help Rochester with his horse! Surely no horse ever slipped so exactly in the right places.

And here let me make a protest against the writers of romance who leave all romance out of their books. All men love a lover; some of us also love a gentleman. All young hearts have a right to their romantic dream. Better a thousand volumes of Bulwer and Disraeli and Mrs. Gore and other sentimentalists than the starvation oatmeal, boiled mutton school which some writers prepare for us

now.

Charlotte Bronte's three novels, "Jane Eyre," "Shirley," and "Villette," are all masterpieces.

They never tire; they give one a healthy excitement, a generous glow. Nothing prettier in its way than Caroline Helstone's love for Robert or his for her ever illuminated the dreary wastes of an English manufacturing district. Nothing more breezy than Shirley, a sort of Lady Gay Spanker, ever carressed her dogs and horses. The novel of "Villette" in the French pension is even more artistic, and it would be invaluable for its portrait of Rachel, under the name of Vashti, even if it had not the more noble portrait of its own author. I am sure "Jane Eyre" (as I love to call Charlotte Bronte) had read Miss Austen. Of course she had! What intelligent English girl had not? Otherwise she could never have given us these pictures of English life, which are the aquarelles in the midst of a great city on fire, which occur in her novels. She was the more passionate and stormy genius of the two, but not so consummate an artist-who was?

George Sand came into my life early. "Consuelo" was the first novel of hers which I read, and I bowed to its power and beauty. "Indiana" came next-dangerous, like playing with fire. After that I went on reading every French novel I could get. Thanks to Jane Austen, they did not hurt me. I remember especially "Gerfaut," a most interesting novel, and "La Lys dans la Vallée" is beautifulmost beautiful.

Then I took to translating Balzac to learn French, and one might as well attempt to describe the plays of Shakespeare and the works of Milton as to talk of this great writer of whom other men have written volumes. I think Henry James's paper on Balzac, written twenty years ago, the best description of this great, profoundly sad, and. most delicate analyst. which I remember.

I should like to mention many works of Cherbuliez, especially "Jean Teterol's Idea," a wonderful book, a picture of what has led to the making of modern France. It is one of the books which I especially remember and recommend.

There was a great deal of fun in Capt. Marryat, and I remember "Charles O'Malley" with gratitude. It took me over a dull stage ride during three days on the Alleghany Mountains. The cheerful Irishman who jumped his horse over his intimate friend was a pleasant companion. There is also a girlish gratitude for the memory of G. P. R. James, the precursor of Stanley J. Weyman. His two horsemen got to be somewhat commonplace, but they were always "going" somewhere and took us with them -healthy, hearty English novels.

The stories of Poe, transcendently terrible, and the novels of Eugene Sue came along together. There is no more interesting novel than "The Mysteries of Paris." It would not hurt anybody to read it to-day, and had not Victor Hugo (gigantic story teller) come in so soon after, Eugene Sue would not have been forgotten. But "Notre Dame

de Paris" is so much more powerful with little dwarf Quasimodo swinging from the bells, that it swept everything out of the way. In my list of novels which "must be read" I should place "Notre Dame de Paris" among the first six.

There were some boys in our family, and they brought in Alexandre Dumas, and Athos, Porthos, and Aramis became my glittering heroes. The later novels of Dumas which placed the house of Valois so conspicuously before me have been an invaluable help to French history. Dumas and Victor Hugo! We should place them within reach of the prisoners of poverty, of illness, of injustice, for they surround the reader with an atmosphere of radiant interest and delight. Hugo's "The Man Who Laughs" and the "Toilers of the Sea" remain in my memory brilliantly stamped in letters of-not exactly diamonds, but rhinestones, at the very least.

Then came the highly metaphysical day of George Eliot. "Adam Bede" was an event. I disliked Dinah instinctively. There seemed a false note somewhere, but its wit and wisdom; its Mrs. Poyser; would have redeemed a worse book, and I grew up to Maggie Tolliver. "Middlemarch" is delicious. The way its author hates Rosamond is stunning. I can no more help reading George Eliot than water can help running down hill; but I do not feel very comfortable while reading her. Perhaps she is too great; perhaps, as a witty critic says: "I prefer to take my metaphysic straight." At any rate, the world's favorite is not mine. Yet I could not give up her little by-play of humor; that at least is sincere; that is Shakespearean.

What a day that was when the first great Hawthorne book was laid on the table! I had been an infantile reader of his short stories of the juvenile miscellany order, and owe my first knowledge of the high empyrean of his "Tanglewood Tales." His sketch of Proserpine as she comes back from "gloomy Dis," always occurs to me as I see the first dandelion. "Ceres was so delighted to recover her first daughter that she made the grass green and the flowers start wherever she put her blessed foot." Oh! great master of the English tongue! Who has ever said anything half so sweet as that about Spring? Who has from behind the veil of an impenetrable melancholy peeped with such appreciative eyes on the glee of childhood, the joyous greeting of the flowers? Who has ever sketched young girlhood as he has done in "The House of the Seven Gables?" Take it for all and all that is my favorite of his novels, although it is asking too much of a Hawthorne worshipper to say which is the favorite.

At a country house lately we all attempted to make lists of our favorite novels, and declared bravely that we would not go to bed until the list was completed. Sunrise and cock crow found us at it, and there they all lie now unfinished. Tolstoi, Tourgenieff, Alphonse Daudet, William Black, Mrs.