V.

Mrs. St. John to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter.

Dear Rector,-I wish you would let Miss Green have a line about the decoration of the pulpit. It is no use any of us saying anything to her since she went to the Slade School and acquired artistic notions, but a word from you would work wonders. What we all feel is that the pulpit should be bright and gay, with some cheerful texts on it, a suitable setting for you and your helpful Christmas sermon, but Miss Green's idea is to drape it entirely in black muslin and purple, like a lying in state. One can do wonders with a little cotton wool and a few yards of Turkey twill, but she will not understand this. with all her nouveau art ideas she got permission to decorate the pulpit at all I cannot think, but there it is, and the sooner she is stopped the better. Poor Mr. Starling drops all the hints he can, but she disregards them all. Yours sincerely,

How

Charlotte St. John.

VI.

Miss Olive Green to the Rev. Lawrence

Lidbetter.

Dear Mr. Lidbetter,-I am sure you will like the pulpit. I am giving it the most careful thought, and there is every promise of a scheme of austere beauty, grave and solemn and yet just touched with a note of happier fulfil ment. For the most part you will find the decorations quite conventionalholly and evergreens, the old terrible cotton-wool snow on crimson background. But I am certain that you will experience a thrill of satisfied surprise when your eyes alight upon the simple gravity of the pulpit's drapery and its flowing sensuous lines. It is so kind of you to give me this opportunity to realize some of my artistic self. Poor Mr. Starling, who is entirely Victorian

in his views of art, has been talking to me about gay colors, but my work is done for you and those who can understand.

Yours sincerely,

Olive Green.

VII.

Mrs. Millstone to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter.

Dear Rector,-Just a line to tell you of a delightful device I have hit upon for the decorations. Cotton-wool, of course, makes excellent snow, and rice is sometimes used, on gum, to suggest winter too. But I have discovered that the most perfect illusion of a white rime can be obtained by wetting the leaves and then sprinkling flour on them. I am going to get all the others to let me finish off everything like that on Christmas Eve (like varnishing-day at the Academy, my husband says), when it will be all fresh for Sunday. Mr. Starling, who is proving himself such a dear, is delighted with the scheme. I hope you are well in that dreadful foggy city.

Mrs. Hobbs, charwoman, to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter.

Honored Sir,-I am writing to you because Hobbs and me dispare of getting any justice from the so called ladies who have been turning the holy church of St. Michael and all Angels into a Covent Garden market. Το sweep up holly and other green stuff I don't mind, because I have heard you say year after year that we should all do our best at Christmas to help each other. I always hold that charity and kindness are more than rubys, but when it comes to flour I say no. If you would believe it Mrs. Millstone is first watering the holly and the lorrel to make it wet, and then sprinkling

flour on it to look like hore frost, and the mess is something dreadful, all over the cushions and carpet. Το sweep up ordinery dust I don't mind, more particulerly as it is my paid work and bounden duty; but unless it is made worth my while Hobbs says I must say no. We draw the line at sweeping up dough. Mr. Starling is very kind, but as Hobbs says you are the founting head. Awaiting a reply I am Your humble servant, Martha Hobbs.

IX.

Mrs. Vansittart to the Rev. Lawrence

Lidbetter.

Dear Rector,-If I am late with the north windows you must understand that it is not my fault, but Pedder's. He has suddenly and most mysteriously adopted an attitude of hostility to his employers (quite in the way one has heard of gardeners doing), and nothing will induce him to cut me any evergreens, which he says he cannot spare. The result is that poor Horace and Mr. Starling have to go out with lanterns after Pedder has left the garden, and cut what they can and convey it to the church by stealth. I think we shall manage fairly well, but thought you had better know in case the result is not equal to your anticipation. Yours sincerely, Grace Vansittart.

X.

Mr. Lulham, organist, to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter.

Dear Sir, I shall be glad to have a

Punch.

My dearest Harriet,—I am having, as I expected, an awful time with the decorations, and I send you a batch of letters and leave the situation to you. Miss Pitt had better keep the Soper window. Give the Lockie girl one of the autograph copies of my Narrow Path, with a reference underneath my name to the chapter on self-sacrifice, and tell her how sorry I am that there has been a misunderstanding. Mrs. Hobbs must have an extra half-acrown, and the flouring must be discreetly discouraged-on the ground of waste of food material. Assure Lulham that there shall be no barrier, and then tell Mrs. Clibborn that the organist has been given a pledge that nothing should intervene between his music and the congregation. I am dining with the Lawsons to-night, and we go afterwards to the Tempest, I think.

The recent discovery of the manuscript of the first book of Milton's Paradise Lost has drawn attention to the romance which so often attaches to old manuscripts and books. Although it is true that nowadays "finds" are becoming more and more rare, there is still a sufficient element of romance attaching to the old-book trade to endue it with a great amount of interest and even excitement. Nowhere, probably, are "finds" more likely to be met with than in the famous second-hand book-market of the Paris quays or in the book-shops of Amsterdam.

The second-hand book-stalls of London have long ago become so systematically and thoroughly scoured that "finds" in them are of very rare occurrence.

Many have probably heard of the wonderful Chaucer which was discovered a few years ago in a lumberroom of a Warwickshire manor-house, and only escaped burning by use as fire-lighting material because the servant happened to show some of the quaint initial letters to the butler, who reported the discovery to his master. Had the book been burned the fortunate owner of it would have been seven hundred pounds poorer.

Quite recently too, in a Breton farm, a travelling artist unearthed a beautifully illuminated missal on vellum (bereft of its covers, it is true), which he purchased from its peasant-owner for a matter of twenty or thirty francs, and on his return to Paris sold it to one of the largest dealers for a thousand times as much; one interesting feature of this volume being the introduction of the portrait of Joan of Arc in one of the initial letters. Like so

many other priceless objets d'art, it found its way across the Atlantic, the American purchaser paying something like one thousand five hundred pounds for its possession.

Less than twenty years ago a “find” of a monkish illuminated breviary took place in the second-hand book-shop of a west of England town. The business had recently changed hands, and the new proprietor knew very little of the trade he had adopted. On attending a sale at a neighboring mansion, and purchasing an odd lot of books, he scarcely took the trouble to examine the volumes, with the result that a shabby old black-letter book was placed in the sixpenny box by his assistant, where it lay for days before a passing and well-known bibliophile spotted it, and with fear and trembling at the value of his discovery, tendered the sixpence in payment. When he got home he was enraptured to find that the book he thought might be worth at least a five-pound note was worth twenty-five times as much.

In the book-boxes of the open-air market on the quays by the Seine bargains may yet be found, for it is only the other day that a first edition of one of the rarest of Swinburne's works was picked up for the infinitesimal sum of thirty centimes, and was afterwards sold to a book collector for something like a hundred times as much. About a dozen years ago a volume of one of the rarest Elizabethan poets was picked up at this same spot for halfa-frane, and was afterwards sold in London for upwards of one hundred and twenty pounds.

The wonder is that, with the numbers of persons who daily inspect the contents of the book-boxes which are

fastened to the parapets of the Quai de Conti and Quai Voltaire, such treasures should for a moment escape the eye of a collector. But we imagine, from conversations we have had at various times with the proprietors of these book-boxes, that few of the curious who turn over the contents possess much knowledge of the value of out-of-the-way volumes; and, of course, when the latter happen to be in a foreign language their ignorance on this point is still greater and more excusable.

Not many months ago the owner of a series of these book-boxes purchased an odd lot of volumes turned out of the lumber-room in one of the old houses, once a nobleman's palace, situated in a narrow street off Ile de la Cité. Amongst the miscellaneous collectionwhich included copies of Voltaire's works and Montaigne's-were several valuable English books of the reign of Henry VII. and (greater than all these) an imperfect but otherwise wellpreserved Caxton. This thick, clumsylooking volume, bereft of one of its covers and minus several pages, had remained for quite a long time in the fifty-centime box of its ignorant purchaser. One day an English undergraduate, whose hobby lay in the direction of early-printed books, happened to be spending a few days in Paris; he saw the book while turning over a multitude of others, and recognized that it was a Caxton. He acquired it at the remarkably low figure of fourpence three-farthings, and carried it back with him to London. The volume, rebound in ancient style, with what remained of the original cover forming a portion of the binding, is now one of his most treasured possessions. It is difficult to say what its precise value may be, but it is scarcely likely to be less than several hundred pounds-a "find" of which the owner has every reason to be proud.

But it is not, of course, in Paris alone that such discoveries are occasionally made. In an old second-hand dealer's shop in one of the larger towns of the Potteries district quite recently an early printed book was discovered by a passing and cycling bibliophile, which, purchased for a few pence, proved to be worth many thousand times as much; it was afterwards sold in one of the London auction-rooms to an American millionaire, who paid a truly remarkable sum for the privilege of taking the book across the Atlantic and placing it in one of the libraries of Pennsylvania.

In Bristol, too, a copy of that very rare book Poems by Two Brothers (Alfred Tennyson) was recently discovered by a collector, who gave sixpence for it, and is now congratulating himself on possessing a treasure which is scarcely likely to prove of less value at any future time.

In the second-hand book-shops of Berlin not a few valuable "finds" are occasionally picked up, though, to do him credit, the Berlin second-hand bookseller appears to be by no means the least intelligent of his class, but rather the reverse; and it is only in English books that bargains are frequently found. His knowledge of early Continental books and of illuminated missals is such that he seldom makes any mistake in the value he puts upon them.

But in some few of the smaller curiosity-shops in the obscurer streets of Berlin bargains may sometimes be found, as witness the purchase of a Venetian illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century in 1894 by an English tourist of artistic taste, which, when brought to England, was valued by a well-known authority at four hundred and fifty guineas; this manuscript having cost the fortunate finder less than as many pence.

It is probable that systematic search

through the cottages and houses of Touraine would better reward the bibliophile than any other district in Europe. Out of the abbeys of Touraine must have come many hundreds, if not thousands, of valuable illuminated manuscript books; and many of these may still remain to find their way ultimately into well-known collections and public libraries and mu

seums.

Not so many years ago a magnificent illuminated copy of A Book of the Hours was discovered in a little hamlet of this ancient province; it is now separated from its old home by some thousands of miles of sea, having been acquired by an American collector for the enormous sum of two thousand five hundred guineas. What the finder paid the peasant in whose ancient farmhouse (once a portion of an abbey) the almost priceless treasure was found did not transpire; but it is scarcely likely that the sum paid was as many sous as the ultimate purchaser paid guineas.

Also in this district, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, were discovered portions of a magnificent work on vellum-incomplete, it is true, but still of immense value. The circumstance of this discovery was a very curious one.

A tourist-or rather perhaps we should say a traveller-came to the village, and finding the one or two spare beds of the inn already occupied, sought shelter for the night in a neighboring cottage. He was shown into a small attic-room, lit by a window of four smallish panes. He did not particularly notice the window that night; but, waking soon after dawn the next morning, he was astonished to see what he took to be stained glass in the window. Rising to examine this, he speedily discovered that the supposed stained glass, through which the light of day was somewhat faintly

passing, was in reality the illuminated vellum pages of some ancient book. Although not a collector, the traveller, one Jean Goulet, was a man of some education, and at once recognized that these pages must have formed a portion of an interesting, if not valuable, Latin manuscript. On descending for breakfast and making an inquiry regarding it, his hostess explained that he was correct, and that the "paper" with which they had sought to mend the cracked panes and replace the broken ones had formed a portion of a book which her father had found in

a neighboring château some thirty years previously, at the time of the French Revolution.

The peasant woman did not evince any great interest in the matter, but admitted the rest of the book was somewhere. After considerable pressure put upon her by her guest, a search was made for it, and it was discovered in a little cupboard near the fireplace. An attempt had evidently been made to light the fire with some of the pages, for several charred and shrivelled ones were still in the cupboard. In the end the remaining leaves-some ninety in number-of this most interesting and beautiful book were acquired by the traveller for a few francs. But nothing would persuade the peasant woman to permit the four or five leaves which had been used for the mending of the window to be taken away! "No," said she; "we've no more glass, and they serve their purpose well enough for us."

Scores of interesting finds might be quoted; but one which occurred in the Midlands not more than four or five years ago must suffice.

In a manor-house not far from Derby some workmen were employed in the enlargement of one of the upper rooms, and after breaking into what was supposed to be a solid wall, they were very much surprised to find the crow