Lives of Notorious Pirates and Highwaymen,
Tales of the Wars (each number containing
two great battles and a skirmish at least),
Calendars of Horrors, Accounts of Eccentric
and Wonderful Characters, none of which I
cared for. Of the circulating libraries, I
had read all the best works; and my taste
was getting too fastidious for Miss Hannah
Maria Jones, though her Rosaline Woodbridge
had seemed to me once an enchanting production.
But there is no compassion for literary
favourites when we get too proud to know
them any longer. We never hesitate to
speak contemptuously of them, no matter
how much they formerly laboured to the best
of their ability to amuse us. So I used to
say, proudly, that "I could not read such
trash as that," and to feel that the bookstalls
must furnish me with something more
befitting my improved state of taste. The shop
did open as a bookseller's again: and with
a much better stock than betore. The new
proprietor was a German, and he had always
a number of foreign books for sale, which
made me feel very much ashamed of having
studied French for four years at Mr. Goss's,
without having learned a word of it: but
I made amends for that at last. I carried
off one day a little London edition of
Voltaire's Henriade, which Herr Müller (the
new proprietor), having but an imperfect
notion ot the value of English words, had
labelled "Poetry, very nice;" but I thought
it a dull book, even after I had found out the
secret of reading French verses. Rousseau's
Nouvelle Héloise, of which I bought for
a trifle a neatly printed Paris edition,
in bright green covers with red labels at the
back, wearied me out before I got through
the first volume. So did some plays of Racine,
which I had been tempted to buy in
consequence of reading a glowing eulogium upon
them by an English author, though I tried
hard to like them. I began to suspect that
there was some secret compact among writers
to pretend to like French literature, though
they didn't. I gave it up; and, for a while,
took to Italian, and bought a cheap copy of
Goldoni's best comedies, which were a real
treasury of humour, when I had got the key
to them.

Herr Müller stopped there some years,
smoking all the time, and doing nothing else,
as far as I could see. He sold his business at
last, and went back, like his predecessor, to
his native place. His principal grievance
against England was the high impost on
tobacco; by reason of which I believe he had
been contributing to the revenues of the
British Government considerably more than
his fair proportion.

Bookseller number three, is there still, and
is a real man of business. He is always
binding books, to augment their value, in a
back-room; and he writes such ornamental
labels as would rejoice the heart of a Chinese.
He classifies books; always knows what he
has; prints now and then a little "catalogue
raisonnée" of his stock. His shelves and
boxes of books have gradually extended
themselves around the walls of the little nook in
which his shop stands—an encroachment that
is winked at by the Commissioners of Pavements.
In that peaceful haven a few book-worms
may always be found; some turning
over the leaves of the several illustrated folios
on architecture or topography, and others
laboriously diving into shilling and sixpenny
boxes.

Are they simply bargain hunting? Is
theirs the old passion for buying in the
cheapest market? Perhaps so. For myself,
although I am not fond of haggling, nor of
driving any man to pay his workmen ill: yet
I never wish to become so rich as to be
indifferent to a decided bargain, when I meet
with one at a bookstall.

THE FIRST OF STREAMS.

IN the North of France there runs a river,
which takes precedence of every stream that
flows. It is, literally, the A. 1. of water-courses.
The Danube, the Ganges, the
Humber, the Indus, the Mississipi, the
Nile, the Oronooko, the Po, the Severn, the
Tiber, the Volga, the Xanthus, and—last
and least—the Yare, all give place to this
forwardest of fluvial nominees. Whatever
gazetteer or geographical dictionary you open,
his is the first name to meet your eye; for, he
is no other than the river Aa. But the Aa
might be transformed to the Zz, or be served
any other whimsical mythological trick, without
my troubling my head about him, if he
had no other claim to notice than his
bi-vocalic name. His history, however, is a
little unusual, especially in the latter part of
his career, and warrants me in making it the
subject of a rapid peripatetic sketch.

The Aa, or Abbun funtana of old, is born
near the village of Bourthes, in the Bolonnais
—the western part of the department of the
Pas-de-Calais—amongst those healthy
hump-backed hills which stretch their chain of
chalk, stone, marl, and marble, from one end
of that "County" of France to the other. In
his infancy, the Aa is playful and timid,
mischievous and unruly, useful and obedient,
alternately, as it may be, like any other
spoiled child without rivals and playfellows to
keep him in check. Now, he nestles close to
the hill-side, hiding behind the willows, or
screened by cottages and orchards and their
well-kept hedges, and undermining the hill,
perhaps, in return for the shelter afforded
him. Soon, he darts out boldly into the open
valley, doubling and winding, like a
well-practised hare. Further on, he steals a slice
of land from its ill-pleased proprietor, and
deposits it, in the shape of a mudbank, to
enlarge or enrich the estate of some neighbour
resident further down-stream. After a while,
he condescends to render trifling services, by