ble that he would have seen the propriety of adopting some similar course of procedure. However this might have been, ever since that time the Edinburgh Reviewers and Mr. Walter Scott have between them furnished the most acceptable food for the reading public, both in and out of Scotlandbut no doubt most exclusively and effectually in their own immediate neighbourhood; and both have always proceeded upon the principle of making the reading public pay handsomely for their gratification, through their fore-speakers, interpreters, and purveyors, the booksellers. It would be unfair, however, to omit mentioning what I firmly believe, that the efforts--even the joint efforts of these great authors, would not have availed to any thing like the extent to which they have in reality reached, had they not been so fortuate as to meet with a dregree of ardour and of tact, quite correspondent to their own, among the new race of booksellers, who had started into life along with themselves-above all, in Mr. Constable, the original publisher of the Edinburgh Review→→ the publisher of most of Mr. Scott's works, and, without doubt, by far the greatest publisher Scotland has ever produced.

There is no doubt that this person is deserving of infinite credit for the share he has had in changing the whole aspect of Edinburgh, as a seat of literary merchandize--and. in truth, making it, instead of no literary mart at all, a greater one than almost any other city in Europe. What a singular contrast does the present state of Edinburgh, in regard to these matters, afford, when compared with what I have been endeavouring to describe as existing in the days of the Creeches! Instead of Scotch authors sending their works to be published by London booksellers, there is nothing more common now-a-days, than to hear of English authors sending down their books to Edinburgh, to be published in a city, than which Memphis or Palmyra could scarcely have appeared a more absurd place of publication to any English author thirty years ago. One that has not examined into the matter, would scarcely be able to believe how large a proportion of the classical works of English literature, published in our age, have made their first appearance on the counters of the Edinburgh Booksellers. But we all know the practical result of this, videlicet, that at this moment an Edinburgh title-page is better than almost any London one--and carries a greater authority along with it. For my part,

if ever I should take it into my head to publish a book, I should most undoubtedly endeavour to get it published in Edinburgh. No book can be published there, and totally neglected. In so small a town, in spite of the quantity of books published in it, the publication of a new book is quite sure to attract the attention of some person, and if it has the least interest, to be talked of in company. If the book be a very interesting one in any way, its popularity extends with the most wonderful rapidity-and, ere a few days have elapsed, the snow-ball has grown so large, that it can be hurled to a distance with steady and certain assurance of hitting its mark. And, indeed, it is only in consequences of the fre quency with which all this has occurred, that the imprimatur of an Edinburgh Bookseller has come to be looked upon with so much habitual respect even in the south. This is surely a very remarkable change; and, for all that I can hear, both authors and booksellers are indebted for it to nothing more than the genuine sagacity of the one individual I have mentioned. I believe it should also be observed, that the establishment of the press of Ballantyne, at the very same instant, almost, as the commencement of the Review, and the publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, helped to push on Scottish publications, or, indeed, Scottish literature. Before that press was set up in Edinburgh, I am told, nobody could venture a book to be printed in Edinburgh; afterwards, the Edinburgh press gained the same sort of celebrity as the Edinburgh title-pages.

One of the first things I do, whenever I come to any town, is to make a round of visits to all the principal bookseller's shops. I think they are by far the most amusing lounges in the world-picture-galleries and promenades they beat all to nothing. I am fond of all kinds of bookseller's shops; I scarcely know which I would prefer to have were I to be confined to one only; but they are all to be had in the utmost perfection, or very nearly so, in Edinburgh. The booksellers themselves, in the first place, are a race of men, in regard to whom I have always felt a particular interest and curiosity. They are never for a moment confounded in my mind with any other class of shop-keepers or traffickers. Their merchandize is the noblest in the world; the wares to which they invite your attention are not fineries for the back, or luxuries for the belly-the inward man is what they aspire to clothe and feed, and the food and raiment they offer are tempt

ing things. They have whole shelves loaded with wisdom and if you want wit, they have drawer-fulls of it at every corner. Go in grave or merry, sweet or sour, sentimental or sarcastic, there is no fear these cunning merchants can produce an article perfectly to your mind. It is impossible that this noble traffick should not communicate something of its essential nobility to those continually engaged in it. Can a man put his name on the title-page of Marmion, or Waverley, or Old Mortality, or Childe Harold, without gaining something from this distinction-I do not mean in his purse merely, but in his person? The supposition is absurd. Your bookseller, however ignorant he may be in many respects, always smells of the shop-and that which is a sarcasm, when said of any other man, is the highest of compliments when applied to him. In the way of his trade, moreover, he must continually come into contact with customers and employers, of a class quite superior to those who frequent any other shop in the street-yes, or ware-house or countinghouse either. His talk is not with the ignorant brute multitude, but with the elite of the Genus Humanum, the Prima Virorum, as Lucretius hath it--the wise and the witty ones of the earth. Instead of haggling over the counter with a smooth-faced Miss or Master, about some piece of foppish finery, or disputing with some rude, boisterous, coarse-minded dealer about casks or tuns, or ship-loads of rum, sugar, or timber-the bibliopole retires into some sequestered little speak-a-word nook, and seats himself beside some serious and refined author, or more serious and more refined authoress, to decide or pronounce upon the merits of some infant tragedy, epic poem, sermon, or romance-or he takes his stand in the centre of his outer court, and publishes to the Gentiles, with a loud voice, the praises of some new publication gone forth, or about to go forth, from his penetralia, to the illumination of the world. What an air of intelligence is breathed upon this man, from the surface of the universe in which he moves! It is as impossible for a bookseller to be devoid of taste and knowledge-some flavour at least as it is for a collier to have a white skin or a miller to want one.

And then their claim to our respect is hereditary as well as personal.." Noble of a noble stem," they are representatives of worthies long since dead and sepulchred, whose names and achievements are still fresh in all men's recollection. What a world of associations are clustered about the

bare name of any one of the great bibliopoles of days long since departed! Curll-whom Swift tormented-the audacious, hooked-nosed Edmund Curll! old Jacob Tonson, with his squint and his "two left legs"-and Lintot, with his orange-tawney waistcoat, and his grey ambling poney, who hinted to Mr. Pope how easy a thing it would be for him to turn one of Horace's Odes, as they were walking their horses up a little bill on the Windsor road. How green is the memory of these old "Fathers of the Row!" They will flourish a hundred years hence as brightly as they do now, and not less brightly, because perhaps another group or two of descendants may have "climbed the ascent of that mysterious tower," and have left kindred names behind them to bourgeon with kindred blossoms!

But the interest one feels about the person of a bookseller, is not sustained by fantasies and associations alone. I should like to know where it is that a man picks up so much interesting information about most interesting subjects, in so very easy a way, as by lounging for half-an-hour in a bookseller's shop. It is in a city what the barber's shop is in a village the centre and focus of all information concerning the affairs of men-the arena for all disputation-the stage for all display. It is there that the sybil Fame sits scattering her oracular leaves to all the winds of heaven; but I cannot add with the poet,

"Umile in tanta gloria,

Coverta gia dello profetico nembo."

The bookseller is the confidant of his customers-be is the first to hear the rumour of the morning, and he watches it through all the stages of its swelling, till it bursts in the evening. He knows Mr.'s opinion of Lord —'s speech, sooner than any man in town. He has the best information upon all the in futuros of the world of letters; he has already had one or two peeps of the first canto of a poem not yet advertised-he has a proof sheet of the next new novel in his pocket; and if you will but promise to be discreet, you may "walk backwards," or walk up stairs for a moment, and he will show it you. Are these things of no value? They may seem so to you among the green hills of Cardigan; but they are very much the reverse to me among the dusty streets of London-or here in Edinburgh. I do love, from my soul, to catch even the droppings of the precious cup of knowledge.

To read books when they are upon every table, and to talk of them when nobody is silent about them, are rather vulgar accomplishments, and objects of vulgar ambition. I like to be beforehand with the world-I like both to see sooner and to see farther than my neighbours. While others are contented to sit in the pit, and gape and listen in wonder upon whatever is shown or uttered, I cannot be satisfied unless I am permitted to go behind the scenes-to see the actors before they walk upon the stage, and examine the machinery of the thunder before its springs are set in motion.

In my next I shall introduce you to the bookseller's shops of Edinburgh.

P. M.

THE importance of the Whigs in Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Review, added to the great enterprize and extensive general business of Mr. Constable, have, as might have been expected, rendered the shop of this bookseller by far the most busy scene in the Bibliopolic world of the North. It is situated in the High-Street, in the midst of the Old Town, where, indeed, the greater part of the Edinburgh Booksellers are still to be found lingering (as the majority of their London brethren also do) in the neighbourhood of the same old haunts to which long custom has attached their predilections. On entering, one sees a place by no means answering, either in point of dimensions, or in point of ornament, to the notion one might have been apt to form of the shop from which so many mighty works are every day issuing-a low dusky chamber, inhabited by a few clerks, and lined with an assortment of unbound books and stationery-entirely devoid of all those luxurious attractions of sofas and sofa-tables, and books of prints, &c. &c. which one meets with in the superb nursery of the Quarterly Review in Albemarle-Street. Bookseller himself is seldom to be seen in this part of his premises; he prefers to sit in a chamber immediately above, where he can proceed in his own work without being disturbed by the incessant cackle of the young Whigs who lounge below; and where few casual visiters are admitted to enter his

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