spicuously displayed upon their shelves. Their so-called catalogues are not worth much, because they include, in most cases, only the high-priced books. The real curiosities are to be found, not in the catalogues, but upon the top and bottom shelves of the dusty stalls.

[We quote the above more as a curiosity than anything else. Its absurdities are too numerous and too obvious to be worthy of categorical replies, and Mr. Field's unhappy and quite needless troubles will afford amusing reading to those who know the real facts of the case.-ED. BOOKWORM.]

TW

Real Bookworms.

WO fine specimens of the genuine bookworm were discovered recently by Mr. Benjamin, of New York, embedded in a precious copy of "Seneca," dated London, 1675, and belonging to John Carey in 1782. One small white worm had entered at the lower right-hand corner, the conical cocoon from which it had emerged still adhering to the leaves of the book without. With its fellow, which was working towards it from the back of the book, no cocoon was found. The former, three-eighths of an inch long and one-eighth of an inch in diameter, was unwittingly killed by the disturbance of its shell, but the remaining member of the family is still alive and healthy. This book-destroyer is now exceedingly rare ;. so much so that when Mr. Bernard Quaritch found one five years ago, in one of his treasured volumes, he celebrated the discovery by giving a dinner to a large party of his principal clients.

P

The Friendship of Books.

ROBABLY no cultivated person can be more eloquent than

when talking about books; and as the subject is one at all

times pleasant to read about as well as to listen to, we have pleasure in reproducing the gist of two lectures delivered during October. The first was delivered by Sir John Lubbock to the students of the Morley Memorial College, Waterloo Road, London.

Beginning with a reference to the praise bestowed on books more than four hundred years ago by Richard De Bury, Bishop of Durham, Sir John said:-Consider how much better off we are now than he was then. You may buy for the price of a pot of beer or one or two pipes as much as you could read in a month. Again, while our books are small and handy, theirs were ponderous, immense-very inconvenient either to hold or to read. Even our deepest books are, in a sense, light. But, what is far more important, we have not only all the most interesting books which De Bury could command, but many more also. Even of ancient literature much has been discovered. Again, in his day, one might almost say that the novel was unknown. In poetry he lived before Shakespeare or Milton. In science, chemistry and geology have been created, and, indeed, the progress of discovery has made all the rest-natural history, astronomy, geography, and others-far more interesting. I have already mentioned novels, and I think those who cry down public libraries because many novels are read in them make a great mistake. I believe we have, most of us, to confess the truth, learned more English history from Shakespeare and Scott than from Stubbs or Green. Moreover, good novels teach us, what is very important, a knowledge of human knowledge.

Books are peculiarly necessary to the working men in our towns. Their life is one of much monotony. We look down upon less civilised races, but yet the savage has a far more varied existence. He must watch the habits of the game which he hunts, their migrations and feeding grounds. He must know where and how to fish. Every month brings him some change of occupation and of food.

He must prepare his weapons and build his own house. Even the lighting of a fire, so easy now, is to him a matter of labour and knack. The agricultural labourer turns his hand to many things. He ploughs and sows, and mows and reaps. He plants at one season, and uses the bill-hook and the axe at another. He looks after the sheep, and pigs, and cows. To hold the plough, to lay a fence, or tie up a sheaf is by no means so easy as it looks. It is said of Wordsworth that a stranger having on one occasion asked to see his study, the maid said, "This is master's room, but he studies in the fields." The agricultural labourer learns a great deal in the fields. He knows much more than we give him credit for, only it is field learning, not book learning-and none the worse for that. But the man who works in a shop or manufactory has a much more monotonous existence. He is confined, perhaps, to one process, or even one part of a process, from year's end to year's end. He acquires, no doubt, a skill little short of the miraculous, but, on the other hand, very narrow. If he is not himself to become a mere animated machine he must generally obtain, and in some cases he can only obtain, the necessary variety and interest from the use of books.

And if reading is an advantage anywhere, it is especially and peculiarly so in London. Our climate does not permit us to sit out in the open air so often as in southern countries, our river is not so pure, our air not so clear as in the country or smaller towns. Nor can you escape to the woods and fields so easily as the people of villages and smaller cities. Books, however, will transport you to the green fields and downs, the woods and rivers, mountains and seashores. They will even take you abroad, and bring before you other countries-the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, the lakes. and mountains of Switzerland, the beautiful islands of the Pacific; you may travel all over the world, without suffering from the heat of the tropics or the cold of the poles; you may visit Rome and Greece, and the wonderful cities of Egypt. Nowhere, again, is it possible to read with more profit than in London, because in the British Museum -the most magnificent museum in the world—in our picture galleries and elsewhere, you have specimens and monuments and pictures which do much to illustrate the books. We hear much now about the creation of a great university for London. But after all, as Carlyle well said, you have a university where you have a library. I have been subjected to some good-humoured ridicule for having said that I believed the time would come when working men would be the great readers. But I adhere to the opinion. You have

THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS.

II

shorter hours than doctors, or lawyers, or merchants, and when you have done your day's work you have had plenty of exercise, while we have still ours to get.

To whom do we owe our national progress? Partly, no doubt, to wise sovereigns and statesmen, partly to our brave army and navy, partly to gallant explorers who paved the way to our Colonial Empire, partly to students and philosophers. But while we remember with gratitude all they have accomplished, we must not forget that the British workman, besides all he has done with his strong right arm, has used his brains also to great advantage. Watt was a mechanical engineer; Henry Cort, whose improvements in manufactures are said to have added more to the wealth of England than the whole value of the National Debt, was the son of a brickmaker; Huntsman, the inventor of cast steel, was a poor watchmaker; Crompton was a weaver; Wedgewood was a potter; Brindley, Telford, Mushat, and Neilson were working men; George Stephenson began life as a cowboy at twopence a day, and could not read till he was eighteen; Dalton was the son of a poor weaver, Faraday of a blacksmith, Newcomen of a blacksmith; Arkwright began life as a barber, Sir Humphrey Davy was an apothecary's apprentice, and Bolton, "the father of Birmingham," was a button maker. We ought to be as proud of them as of any of our generals or statesmen. Those who love reading are, to a great extent, independent of the caprices or tyranny of their fellow-men. Indeed, there is hardly any trouble which an hour's reading will not diminish. A library, indeed, is not only the best university; it is a true fairyland, a Paradise upon earth, a Garden of Eden without its one drawback, for all is free to us, especially the fruit of the tree of knowledge for which we are told that our first mother abandoned all the pleasures of Paradise.

The second lecture was delivered by the Rev. S. A. Barnett at the opening of the Whitechapel Free Library, and was very happily described by Lord Roseberry as an "exquisite little speech." The subject was "Books and their Uses."

The uses of books, Mr. Barnett said, were innumerable, but their chief use was to be our friends. All of us put friendship at the top of our possessions, and valued above all things a good friend. East London suffered most of all from the loss of the friendship of West London, and no amount of gifts, no kind words, no number of missions and no laws, were they for relief or coercion, could ever make up for that loss of friendship. The chief use of books was to

be our friends, and books made very often the turning-point in a man's life. For himself he remembered how reading Seeley's "Ecce Homo " gave him a new foothold for faith, and how Maine's "Ancient Law" made his life travel back to the very beginnings of things, and how Browning's poems gave him a ladder on which to step from the common things of earth to the glories of heaven. They were friends which inspired and rebuked and never wearied, which never sulked and never had any moods; they were friends which gave and took, and there must be reciprocity in true friendship. They gave to the readers what their readers needed with an exquisite sympathy, but they also took something from the reader. Books were faithful-they spoke alike to rich and poor, in sickness and in health-they were the comforters of many sick beds, and it was a striking fact that Tennyson, a man with many friends, asked on his death-bed for a book, and that his last words were, "I have opened the book." The best books, like the best people, needed to be introduced-their exterior was not always attractive. There were books which needed no introduction-pleasing books which made good company for the idle hour; but those books which stood by a man in his hours of trouble and helped him in times of difficulty, in sorrow, and death, were friends who very often needed an introduction. Now, introducers were not very common in East London-those people who, knowing the life within the books, were able to introduce them to people who had no knowledge of the books. Happily they were becoming more common, and people were beginning to recognise the fact that they in East London needed some other knowledge than how to increase their earnings. All labour had its best comfort in enabling great men to live. The Greeks and Jews stood high above other nations, not because they achieved great conquests, but because they left us great lives on which we could feed our character. No accumulation of wealth, no aggrandisement of empire would enable the English nation to bear great men. They wanted more men who would come amid them who, knowing something of the books themselves, would introduce them to readers. There were 10,000 books in that library. Among them it was certain there were friends to suit all characters, and all men, and all times. Light books-novels and tales-books to be men's companions, and to take them from their surroundings-these books had their value, and a very great value, in their neighbourhood. But it was the solid books, the philosophies, the histories, the poetry-it was these that could help them in their trouble, and it was these that he urged his friends in Whitechapel to seek.