702 Nole& of the Month - 



Chancellor, but to that of Chief Baron, which was offered to him by 

 Mr. Canning, and refused. 



So say the wise : but they do not add what they ought, that Brougham 

 was willing enough to take employment under Canning, if he could get 

 the place he wanted : this was the Mastership of the Rolls, a handsome 

 affair of 8, 0001. a year, and a sinecure, while oldEldon sat in the Chancery; 

 though it is a very different thing, now that a very different lawyer sits 

 there. But Leach, who tantalized him with four physicians at a time, 

 and pretended to be for half a dozen months at Death's door, is now 

 a keen, quick, vivid, old official ; struts about the parks with his old 

 gaiety ; looks in at the Opera with his old gallantry, and ten to one will 

 yet see Brougham's exit from this disappointing world. 



Old Books. At the sale of the library of the late William Simonds 

 Higgs, esq. F.A.S., under the hammer of Messrs. Sotheby and Son, many 

 of the books brought extraordinary prices. We subjoin a few specimens. 



i. *. 



Davis's Secr3ts of Angling ; a fuw A Boke of the Hoole Lyf of Jason ; 



leaves (no date) 12 Caxton, 1475 87 3 



Walton's Angler; first edition, 1653 11 The Golden Legende; Wynkyn de 



Walton and Cotton's Angler Jllus- Worde, 1527 2C 



trated (no date) C3 Shyp of Folys ; Rycharde Pynson, 



Cronicles of Englond ; Caxton, 1480 73 10 1509 21 



Discripcion of Bretagne ; Caxton, The Grete Herball; Lanrens An- 



1480 27 6 drewe,1527 20 8 



Cronycle of Englond; Julian No- Liber Precum; a Missal executed 



tary, 1515 43 10 for Charles VII. King of France, 



Dives et Pauper; Rycharde Pynson, about 1430. 04 10 



1498 '. 30 9 



Now, what can be more culpable, short of direct robbery, than this? 

 Here are about 500/. thrown away in the purchase of a dozen books, 

 not one of them intrinsically worth sixpence. We thus have 12/. given 

 for what? Davis's Secrets of Angling, important production! and of 

 that even only a few leaves. How justly the purchaser must hug him- 

 self on the possession of such a treasure ! We have 7^/ given for the 

 " Cronicles of England," not worth half the number of farthings. But then 

 it has had the merit of being printed four hundred years ago, and having 

 escaped the teeth of mice and time. The possessor must therefore think 

 his money incomparably expended : he may survey it upon his shelves, 

 rejoice in its dust, and luxuriate over the consciousness that if there are 

 fools like himself in the world, ready to buy every abortion of printing, 

 they must lay out their money on some other fragment of a volume. 



What prompts this silliness? It is not love of literature ; for the buy- 

 ers of those rags and patches would see living literature expire, before 

 they would give a shilling to keep it alive. It is not admiration of the 

 first struggles of a noble art, for they are in general ignorant of every 

 thing on the subject but what they learn from the auctioneer. ''It is the 

 ridiculous ambition of having what men of sense would despise, and men 

 of learning throw away. But it is theirs exclusively; they have what 

 nobody else may have ; and they thus realise, outside the walls of St. 

 Luke's, the melancholy burlesque within rejoice in their clay diamonds 

 and their straw crowns. 



But is there not a stern responsibility laid upon the^'possessors of 

 wealt'i ? Are they not accountable for its use to a higher tribunal than 



