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Many of us are incompetent to express opinions in regard to first editions, because of insane infatuation with them. Yet any one must admit that a Dickens Christmas story, in the original binding, is by no means to be despised, such a one as the copy of the Christmas Carol, which was sold with Thackeray's library and contained the inscription, "W. M. Thackeray, from Charles Dickens (whom he made very happy once a long way from home)." It is pleasant to remember that it was eagerly competed for, and that it finally became the property of Queen Victoria for the sum of £25 10s. consider the familiar instance of Poe's Tamerlane, which in the original paper cover sold for $1850 in 1893; bound by Lortic at great expense, the same copy was sold in the Maxwell sale in 1895 for $1450, and in 1900 it was again sold in the McKee collection for $2050. The variations in price are instructive. The poems contained in the book would be called mediocre by any competent critic, although Mr. Woodberry says that there is some autobiographic interest in certain passages. The book is rare, of course, but there are others which are just as rare which do not command half the money. Mr. McKee's Shakespeare, eight volumes, Edinburgh edition of 1771 - Robert Burns's copy, with his autograph on the title-page of volume I.-brought $888 only. I am not going to explain it, for the simple reason that I do not know how to do it.

The permanency of literary association far surpasses that of merely historical association. The interest which every one has in the supposititious "Old Curiosity Shop," the house of Mr. Dombey, and the mansion occupied by Mr. Boffin - "a corner house not far from Cavendish Square" - supposed to have been at one time the abode of Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, is proverbial, and altogether human and natural. Every one loves to look upon No. 1 Devonshire Terrace, where the great man wrote the Carol, Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge, Chuzzlewit, and Dombey and Son, however indifferent he may be to the Temple Church, the Fire Monument, or the queer old palace of St. James. We are fond of identifying places with the inventions of novelists. In Rome, Hilda's tower is pointed out to the worshippers of Hawthorne, admiring enthusiasts who would be bored by the Tower of London; and the council chamber where Richard II. abdicated the throne is tame in comparison with Queen Anne's Tavern, near St. Paul's, where Johnson was a regular visitor, if the gossipers can be believed. At lovely Sans Souci there is far more of Voltaire than of the great Frederick. In Skansen, at Stockholm, we visit the transplanted summer cottage of Swedenborg with respectful admiration. We Americans are wont to gaze with proud satisfaction upon Sunnyside, made immortal by Irving's gentle, playful fancy, and we even make pilgrimages to Walden in honor of Thoreau, the man of whom John Burroughs said, "He is almost as local as a woodchuck." Poe's Fordham cottage has, I fear, been moved in the march of suburban improvement, and I sorrow at the unfortunate destruction of Cooper's "Otsego Hall." Arthur Bartlett Maurice has given us an entertaining monograph about New York in Fiction, adorned with the reproductions which the marvellous development of photography has made possible, and it is welcome to every one who has in his being a spark of the bookman's fire. It was no easy task, and, although it is remarkably well done, I fear that New York can never hope to possess associations like those which Laurence Hutton so gracefully preserves for us in his series of "Literary Landmarks." It is difficult to impart a tinge of romance to a house on Washington Square or to a grim dwelling on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, wanting, as they are, in actual antiquity; while the Grand Central Station defies even Howells's power of investing the commonplace with interest. The few buildings we had begun to cherish for their literary associations have been swept away by the remorseless hand of utilitarian improvement. The old University in Washington Square, which had a sort of picturesqueness in its architecture, sacred to Cecil Dreeme and our early war - martyr, Theodore Winthrop, and Colonel Carter's curious abiding-place, destroyed in the inevitable alteration of No. 58 West Tenth Street, have left behind them only a fleeting memory. The unattractive house on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, which the great shop-keeper thought to be destined to remain as a palace and a show, took on its slight literary atmosphere when, as the Manhattan Club, it figured in poor Ford's Peter Stirling, but it has been pulled to pieces to make way for a modern structure, which is more sightly than its tasteless predecessor. I remember that Mayor Hoffman suggested to Mr. Stewart that the big Thirty-fourth Street pile of marble should be devoted to the purpose of a residence for the municipal chief-magistrate, but the idea was not received with enthusiasm. The only marks which distinguish the abode of a mayor are the two lamps which adorn the entrance, the city, as Mr. Evarts said in the WeedOpdyke trial, being wiser than Diogenes and using two lanterns to discover an honest man. The old Colonnade Row on Lafayette Place, where, in The Ralstons, Marion Crawford made the Crowdies dwell, and where, a generation ago, the kindly, persuasive Dwight taught to us incipient attorneys the principles of the law, will be gone before these pages shall have attained the dignity of print. The iconoclast, however, dwells in other climes and pursues his destructive occupation in other towns than ours. Already the annihilating touch of the reformer is busy in the heart of London, and the widening of the Strand will almost rival the Great Fire as a consumer of monuments. Fortunately we may still find, hiding in its spacious grounds, Holland House, where Addison lived and Macaulay talked; the Albany, scarcely ancient as yet, where Monk Lewis, Canning, and Byron sojourned; and Staple Inn only partially restored, and therefore practically intact, where Johnson wrote Rasselas. In Paris, despite the ravages of the third Napoleon and the later work of civic improvement, we may view the home of Victor Hugo, and, in the monotonous circle of the Place Vendôme, the house where Chopin died.

George Augustus Sala used to say that he knew a worthy citizen of Edinburgh who

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