But we were apologising for book-hunting, not because it teaches moral lessons, as "dauncyng" also does, according to Sir Thomas Elyot, in the "Boke called the Gouvernour," but because it affords a kind of sportive excitement. Bookstalls are not the only field of the chase. Book catalogues, which reach the collector through the post, give him all the pleasures of the sport at home. He reads the booksellers' catalogues eagerly, he marks his chosen sport with pencil, he writes by return of post, or he telegraphs to the vendor. Unfortunately he almost always finds that he has been forestalled, probably by some bookseller's agent. When the catalogue is a French one, it is obvious that Parisians have the pick of the market before our slow letters reach M. Claudin, or M. Labitte. Still the catalogues themselves are a kind of lesson in bibliography. You see from them how prices are ruling, and you can gloat, in fancy, over De Luyne's edition of Molière, 1673, two volumes in red morocco, doublé ("Trautz Bauzonnet"), or some other vanity hopelessly out of reach. In their catalogues, M. Damascène Morgand prints a facsimile of the frontispiece of this very rare edition. The bust of Molière occupies the centre, and portraits of the great actor, as Sganarelle and Mascarille (of the "Précieuses Ridicules"), stand on either side. In the second volume are
