But these were purely adventitious prices, as was clearly shown in the sale at the same auction rooms, a year or two earlier, of the following:

The sales occasionally made at auction of certain books at extraordinary prices, prove nothing whatever as to the real market value, for these reasons: (1) The auctioneer often has an unlimited bid, and the price is carried up to an inordinate height. (2) Two or more bidders present, infatuated by the idea of extreme rarity, bid against one another until all but one succumb, when the price has reached a figure which it is a mild use of terms to call absurd. (3) Descriptions in sale catalogues, though often entirely unfounded, characterising a book as "excessively rare;" "only — copies known," "very scarce," "never before offered at our sales," etc., may carry the bidding on a book up to an unheard-of price.

The appeal always lies to the years against the hours; and many a poor book-mad enthusiast has had to rue his too easy credulity in giving an extravagant sum for books which he discovers later that he could have bought for as many shillings as he has paid dollars. Not that the rarissimi of early printed books can ever be purchased for a trifle; but it should ever be remembered that even at the sales where a few—a very few—bring the enormous prices that are bruited abroad, the mass of the books offered are knocked down at very moderate figures, or are even sacrificed at rates very far below their cost. The possessor of one of the books so advertised as sold at some auction for a hundred dollars or upwards, if he expects to realise a tithe of the figure quoted, will speedily find himself in the vocative.

While there are almost priceless rarities not to be found in the market by any buyer, let the book collector be consoled by the knowledge that good books, in good editions, were never so easy to come by as now. A fine library can be gathered by any one with very moderate means, supplemented by a fair amount of sagacity and common sense. The buyer with a carefully digested list of books wanted will find that to buy them wisely takes more time and less money than he had anticipated. The time is required to acquaint himself with the many competing editions, with their respective merits and demerits. This involves a comparison of type, paper, and binding, as well as the comparative prices of various dealers for the same books. No one who is himself gifted with good perceptions and good taste, should trust to other hands the selection of his library. His enjoyment of it will be proportioned to the extent to which it is his own creation. The passion for nobly written books, handsomely printed, and clothed in a fitting garb, when it has once dawned, is not to be defrauded of its satisfaction by hiring a commission merchant to appease it. What we do for ourselves, in the acquirement of any knowledge, is apt to be well done: what is done for us by others is of little value.

We have heard of some uninformed parvenus, grown suddenly rich, who have first ordered a magnificent library room fitted with rose-wood, marble and gilded trappings, and then ordered it to be filled with splendidly bound volumes at so much per volume. And it is an authentic fact, that a bookseller to the Czar of Russia one Klostermann, actually sold books at fifty to one hundred roubles by the yard, according to the binding. The force of folly could no farther go, to debase the aims and degrade the intellect of man.

In the chapter upon rare books, the reader will find instances in great variety of the causes that contribute to the scarcity and enhancement of prices of certain books, without at all affecting their intrinsic value, which may be of the smallest.