Sect. II.] Germany. 181 



Here an amount of sales, and especially of barter, 

 is effected, which has no parallel in the world. 

 This plan is attended with many advantages. 

 Booksellers, by having so extensive and ready a 

 sale, are enabled to strike off much larger im- 

 pressions of good works, and to afford them at 

 a lower price. He who wishes to procure a 

 book in that country, instead of being con- 

 demned to a long and tedious search for v* hat is 

 only sold by one bookseller, has every publica- 

 tion of value brought to his door with the great- 

 est certainty and expedition. And the frequent 

 return of these extensive scenes of sale and ex- 

 change, has a tendency to keep up the public at- 

 tention to literary objects, and to give a degree 

 of life and interest to the commerce in books, 

 which we look for in vain in other countries. 



The zeal and enterprise of German booksel- 

 lers are incredible. They frequently have agents 

 and correspondents in every literary p&.rt of Eu- 

 rope, who send them, with the utmost speed, all 

 useful intelligence, and procure for them the 

 proof-sheets of new and important works as they 

 are printing : whence it often happens, that the 

 originals and the German translations are offered 

 for sale at the same time. To this it may be 

 added, that the ready and extensive sales of books 

 which the fairs enable them to effect, give such 

 manifest advantages, that they can more easily 

 afford, and are more cheerfully disposed to pa}^ a 

 liberal price for literary services, than the same 

 class of men in most other countries. It is said 

 that between three and four hundred booksellers 



