We present this the first number of our new monthly to your favorable notice.

The BOOKMART will be a representative of the dealers in, and owners of Books, Old, Fine and Rare.

Its Departments are Trade and Literary News, Correspondence, Book Notices, Books Wanted, Books For Sale, Exchanges and Advertisements. Under these headings the BOOKMART will publish items of interest to the Book Dealers, valuable information on books, authors, and questions regarding books for the general reader, and under the headings Books Wanted and Books For Sale, the BOOKMART will make a specialty of giving reliable information as to where books can be bought and sold on the most advantageous terms to both buyer and seller.

The circulation of the BOOKMART will be among the book reading and book buying classes, thereby opening an avenue of trade to Second-hand Dealers and owners of books throughout the country, enabling them to place their business before thousands of readers they could not otherwise directly reach, and at comparatively small expense.

We acknowledge that the word mart is somewhat antiquated, nevertheless, as a name, it expresses exactly the design of its publishers, which is, to offer a "market place" where parties that have books for sale can meet with those who desire to purchase, be they never so widely separated.

.

And in this quaint old “MART" we shall reserve a cozy corner for men of letters, and keep all kinds of nooks to edify and serve our patrons, not forgetting a place for the go-ahead spirit of the 19th Century.

While we know that the country is flooded with literature of every kind, we still believe that the BOOKMART, to use the language of another, "fills a niche in our literature not now occupied by any publication.

The BOOKMART will answer a question that frequently perplexes the mind of the thoughtful reader. how and where, can I get the books I want? To some this question comes more frequently than to others. Some ask it because they cannot find the books they want, to such persons the BOOKMART İS a means of communication with Bibliomaniacs and Rare Book Dealers all over the country, vastly increasing their chances for obtaining the desired treas

ures.

Others ask this question because the many books they want cost more than they feel like sparing, such persons can go with the BOOKMART, and select their books from the stock of the cheapest and best Second-Hand Book Dealers in the country, saving from forty to sixty per cent.; with the BOOKMART they can also go to hundreds of private libraries that could be reached in no other way, and buy cheaply there the books they need. Nearly all readers having some books to dispose of as well as some to buy.

We trust you are interested in our effort to circulate good books and we ask you to aid us with your subscription and to kindly hand this copy to your friends.

:0:

AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-HUNTER.
"The Library,”—By A Lang.

"All men", says Dr. Dibdin, "like to be theirown librarians." A writer on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the books that even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to collect. There are books which no lover of literature can afford to be without; classics, ancient and modern, on which the world has pronounced its verdict. These works, in whatever shape we may be able to possess them, are the necessary foundations of even the smallest collections. Homer, Dante and Milton, Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristophanes and Moliere, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and Scott, these every lover of letters will desire to possess in the original languages or in translations. The list of such classics is short indeed, and when we go beyond it, the tastes of men begin to differ very widely. An assortment of broadsheet ballads and scrap-books, bought in boyhood, was the nucleus of Scott's library, rich in the works of poets and magicians, of alchemists, and anecdotists. A childish liking for colored prints of stage characters, may be the germ of a theatrical collection like those of Douce, and Malone, and Cousin. People who are studying any past period of human history, or any old phase or expression of human genius, will eagerly collect little contemporary volumes which seem trash to other amateurs. For example, to a student of Moliere, it is a happy chance to come across “La Carte du Royaume des Pretieuses”—(The map of the kingdom of the "Precieuses")-written the year before the commedian brought out his famous play "Les | Precieuses Ridicules." This geographical tract appeared in the very "Recueil des Pieces Choisies," whose authors Magdeleon, in the play was expecting to entertain, when Mascarille made his appearThere is a faculty which Horace Walpole

ance.

named "serendipity," the luck of falling on just the literary document which one wants at the moment. All collectors of out of the way books know the pleasure of the exercise of serendipity, but they enjoy it in different ways. One man will go home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however various the taste of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one point, the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can sympathize with Charles Lamb's attachment to "that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which he dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden." But it is another thing when Lamb says, "I do not care for a first folio of Shakespeare." A bibliophile who could say this could say anything.

No, there are, in every period of taste, books which, apart from their literary value, all collectors admit to posses, if not for themselves, then for others of the brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness. These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity. It is about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them, that the following pages are to treat. It is a subject more closely connected with the taste for curiosities than for art, strictly so called. We are to be occupied, not so much with literature as with books, not so much with criticism as with bibliography, the quaint duenna of literature, a study apparently dry, but not without its humors. And here an apology must be made for the frequent allusions and anecdotes derived from French writers. These are as unavoidable, almost, as the use of French terms of the sport in tennis and in fencing. Thus, Richard de Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., writes in his "Philobiblon:" "Oh God of Gods in Zion! what a rushing river of joy gladdens my heart as often as I have a chance of going to Paris! There the day always seems short; there are the goodly collections on the delicate fragrant book-shelves." Since Dante wrote of

"L'onor di quell' arte

Ch'allumare e chiamata in Parisi,"

"the art that is called illuminating in Paris," and all the other arts of writing, printing, binding books, have been most skilfully practised by France. She improved on the lessons given by Germany and Italy in these crafts. Twenty books about books are written in Paris for one that is published in England. In our country Dibdin is out of date (the second edition of his "Bibliomania" was published in 1811), and Mr. Hill Burton's humorous "Book-hunter" is out of print. Meanwhile, in France, writers grave and gay, from the gigantic industry of Brunet to Nodier's quaint fancy, and Janin's wit, and the always entertaining bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), have written, or are writing, on books, manuscripts, engravings, editions, and bindings. In England, therefore, rare French books are eagerly sought, and may be found in all the bookseller's catalogues. On the continent there is no such care for our curious or beautiful editions, old or new.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

GOOD BOOKS.

Reading is that art by which we are enabled to avail ourselves of the recorded wisdom of mankind.

As the results of Deliberation, the achievements of Enterprise, the conclusions of Judgment and the excursions of Fancy, have, to a large extent, been recorded by the pen and diffused by the Press, each individual may profit by the labor of others, and without diminishing the common stock, be enriched from the Public Treasury of Intellectual Wealth.

No matter what his position each man owes to himself the duty of mental acquisition, this necessitates careful selection, that he may not waste valuable time which should be devoted to mental and moral improvement, in the perusal of that which is unprofitable, perhaps positively injurious, in its tendency.

In order to induce men to become diligent students we cite some weighty opinions as to the value of good books, and the inestimable rewards attendant upon literary research and intellectual cultivation.

That eccentric philosopher, Robert Burton, after a review of the various devices which are used to exercise the "foul fiend," Melancholy, thus continues: "But amongst these exercises, or recreations of the mind within doors, there is none so general, so aptly to be applied to all sorts of men, so fit and proper to dispel idleness and melancholy, as that of study: study is the delight of old age, the support of youth, the ornament of prosperity, the solace and refuse of adversity, the comfort of domestic life, etc., find the rest in "Tully pro Archia Poets. .

Who is he that is now wholly overcome with idleness, or otherwise involved in a labarinth of worldly care, troubles and discontents; that will not be much lightened in his mind by the reading of some enticing story, true or feined, where, as in a glass, he shall observe what our forefathers have done; the beginnings, ruins, falls, periods, of commonwealths, private men's actions displayed to the life, &c., &c. Who is not earnestly affected with a passionate speech well penned, on elegant poem, or some pleasant, bewitching discourse.

Julian the apostate was so taken with an oration by Libanins the sophister, that, as he confessed, he could not be quiet till he had read it all out.

To most kind of men it is an extraordinary delight to study. For what a world of books offers itself in all subjects, arts and sciences, to the sweet consent and capacity of the reader! I could even live and die, saith one, with such meditations, and take more delight, true content of mind, in them, than thou hast in all thy wealth and sport, how rich soever thou art. ****

The like pleasure there is in all other studies, to such as are truly addicted to them. Whoever he is therefore that is overrun with solitariness, or carried away with pleasing melancholy and vain conceits, and for want of employment knows not how to spend his time, or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe no better remedy than this of study, to compose himself to the learning of some art or science. So sweet is the delight of study, the more learning they have the more they covet to learn.

"If I were not a King, I would be a University man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors." (Speech of JAMES I.: