who❞—as the writer of the Preface asks

-"could or rather would have one in 'Physick.'" Even, we may add, when, as in this case, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, London, 1660, is included in the "Libri Medici."

Mr. Lawler's copy of the Bernard Catalogue fortunately is priced by a contemporary hand, so that he is able to furnish a list of the very low prices realised. The twenty-two Caxtons in the sale (three of them imperfect) brought altogether £4 17s. To name a few of these English incumabula-Jason and the Golden Fleece, n.d., brought 3s. and 6d.; The Book of Chess Moralized, n.d., Is. and 6d.; History of Troy, 1500, 3s.; Higden's Polycronicon, n.d., 4s.; The Golden Legend, n.d., 8s.; Bartholomæus. de Proprietate Rerum in English, £1 2d. Contrast these prices with the recordbreaking ones in four and five figures obtained at the Robert Hoe sale last winter, and with the further fact that a single leaf from the least of these productions of the earliest English printer would now bring more pounds sterling than the entire book commanded in this seventeenth century auction sale.

In addition to the Caxtons, the library contained some twenty-five hundred English books and pamphlets printed before the

year 1700, among them a number now exceedingly rare and highly valued, and also a sprinkling of books and pamphlets relating to America. Typical of the paltry prices paid for this Americana, we quote the following titles: Smith's History of New England, Virginia, etc., 1624, 4s. and 2d.; Hakluyt's Voyages, 2 vols., 1598, 19s.; Morton's History of New England, 1615, 8d. Nine of the rarest books relating to New England, including Lechford's News from New England and Wood's New England Prospect in one bundle sold for 5s. and 2d.

The highest price obtained for a single book in the entire sale was £10 for a Bishop Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible. The lowest, 4d., the least Mr. Lawler judges at which a bidding might be started. It goes without saying that most of the books on law, medicine and theology (especially the medicinal books) would at the present time bring no more

than the price of paper stock. Solomon of old declared that of making many books there is no end, and of all but a very small part of them it may be asked, "If I was so soon to be done for,

I wonder what I was begun for."

With books as with all things in this world, animate or inanimate, it is a question of the survival of the fittest. The books that in recent sales have brought great prices and astonished not only the general public but also the experienced book-collector, have stood the test of time, and it is a reasonable assumption that their shadows will now never grow less but greater as the ages come and go.

The sale, held at Dr. Bernard's late dwelling house in Little Britain, realised about £5,000, the equivalent at the present day, it is estimated, of £15,000, an average of one dollar and fifty cents each for the fifty thousand books collected by this seventeenth century disciple of Richard de Bury, whose love of books and learning neither illness nor old age could quench. We have no criticism to make of the doctor as a bibliophile except the inference we are constrained to draw, that he was not over particular as to the condition of his books, for we are told that "he was not solicitous about their dress, 'twas sufficient that he had the book."

The catalogue, an octavo of four hundred and fifty pages, is arranged under subject headings called by the compiler "Faculties." Folios in the van, followed by quartos, octavos, on down to duodecimos. A classification still followed by the French in contradistinction to the alphabetical arrangement generally adopted by English and American catalogue-makers.

It was no padded sale-this book auction of Dr. Bernard-such as occurs not infrequently in these days, for the Preface to the Catalogue explicitly states that not one book is added of which the doctor was not possessed at the time of his death. In conclusion the writer of the Preface offers to his prospective buyers this excuse for any errors or imperfections the Catalogue may contain.

"It may be here expected that some apology should be made for the errors

and imperfections in the Catalogue, but the reasons that occasioned them not being to be given without some violation of good nature or good manners; we must only in general beg the 'Learned and

Judicious Reader's' excuse, and by way of compensation assure him that all imaginable care shall be taken in the sale that nothing shall be offered him unbecoming a gentleman and a scholar."

T IS interesting to be sitting, an Observer-AtLife, in some crowded restaurant, and, as the blatant orchestra strikes suddenly into that most universal of all bridal music, the Lohengrin Wedding March, to watch the pairs of eyes that meet instantly in a solitude of feeling across tables; to look into the little momentary worlds of memory, of tenderness, of cynicism, or regret that lie in eyes that meet eyes, or that stare, solitary, into brief vacancy. One must catch it quickly, for the modern world lingers less and less over sentimental moments, but the involuntary clutch is there, even though it endures only through the first few bars. Birth, marriage, giving in marriage, and death-these are the universal moments.

So the novelist, even the insincere novelist with only his own axe of popularity to grind, is playing a safe game with his public when he halts the onward march of his narrative to linger for a page or a chapter on the Wedding Day. The melodramatic novelist and the cheaply sentimental novelist know thisit is a part of the secret of the vogue of the "thriller" and the saccharine successes. And invariably the finely-written, meaningful marriage scene in a novel that is worthy record of the human lives it draws will fill some of the unforgettable pages of the book. Particularly when it is marriage that is the book's theme do we find the novelist's sense of proportion demanding space for the marriage service. What matter if one wedding be very like another! What matter if the words be old-of all the words

in any language the marriage service is furthest, at each new utterance, from banal.

It would have been strange indeed if George Meredith, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, had not given a chapter to his hero's marriage-the thrilling duet of young love that led straight to this moment demanded such a pause. But the Comic Spirit rules the chapter and the irony of the Lost Wedding Ring runs like a mocking laugh through the chapter-the ring that Richard, on his way to the church, had lost, and which his cousin Clare was wearing while the cumulative words were bearing Richard to that height from which he must be dashed down in horrid disgrace. Listen:

At the altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths. They are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do. If there is any hesitation at the immense undertaking it is but maidenly. She conceives as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over them hangs a cool young curate in his raiment of office

Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour of the complacent giant at least is his, and that he means to hold him bound through the eternities, men may hear. Clearly and with brave modesty speaks she, no less firmly, though her body trembles; her voice just vibrating while the tone travels on, like a smitten vase.

Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each other. The Man with his right hand takes the Woman by her right hand; the Woman with her right hand takes the Man by his right hand-Devils dare not laugh at whom Angels crowd to contemplate. .

Their hands are joined, their blood flows as one stream. Adam and fair Eve front the generations. Are they not lovely? Purer fountains of life were never in two bosoms. And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the Man to put a ring on the Woman's fourth finger, counting thumb. And the Man thrusts his hand into one pocket and then into another, forward and backward many times, into all his pockets. He remembers that he felt for it, and felt it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the gardens. And his hand comes forth empty. And the Man is ghastly to look at!

It is of course a terrible moment.

Richard saves the situation, of course, by demanding from his faithful nurse her wedding ring, which, with agitation, is handed over and the service proceeds with "With this ring I thee wed." Says Meredith: "They are prayed over and blest. For good or ill the deed is done."

In Vanity Fair Thackeray surmises. with his reader on just how Becky and Rawdon were married. Not being a public affair it is kept, too, from the reader? But poor little Amelia's wedding day is given a certain amount of notice, with its rain and muffled sobbings and general gloom. "One gusty, raw day at the end of April, George Osbourne, looking very haggard and pale, although smartly

dressed in a blue coat and brass buttons, came into old Slaughters' Coffee House." Here he met William Dobbin, the faithful, unthanked God from the Machine who was responsible for this hour, and after drinking two glasses of curoçoa the two drove down by Brompton to a certain chapel near Fulham Road there, where there was a coach and four in

waiting. "In a word, George had thrown the great cast-he was going to be married! Hence his pallor and nervousness, his sleepless night and agitation in the morning." It is almost more George's wedding day than Amelia's, but we know she wore a brown silk pelisse and a straw bonnet with a pink ribbon,

and over the bonnet a veil of white Chantilly lace. There was nobody in the church but Joseph Sedley and Mrs. Sedley and the landlady and her daughter with a few strangers. The rain came down in sheets and Mrs. Sedley sobbed in her pew. "Emmy's response came

fluttering up to her lips from her heart, but was scarcely heard by anybody but Captain Dobbin." The rain drove into their faces as they passed to their chariot. "William Dobbin stood in the church porch looking at it, a queer figure. The small crowd and spectators jeered him. He was not thinking of them or their laughter."

There is an interrupted marriage ceremony in Jane Eyre, and as an effective lead up to that shocking moment the charge in the marriage service is given verbatim: "I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all

hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony ye do now confess it." There came the pause: "When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply? Not perhaps once in a hundred years!" And the clergyman was proceeding; his hand was already stretched toward Rochester as his lips unclosed to ask: "Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?" when a distinct and near voice said: "This marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment." Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled beneath his feet, and said to the clergyman, "Proceed." But the brother of the insane living wife continued the revelation, and the wedding party left the church.

Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles pictures poor Tess's pathetic wedding, before very few people, the marriage by special license, the bride in the white gown and veil Angel Clare had given her the whole service proceeding against the tragic background of Tess's confession to Angel, written but unread. Throughout the scene the Fate motif of the book sounds like a sombre bell.

John Halifax is married to Ursula March in one paragraph, but, the marriage being that of a gentlewoman to a

waif of the world, his only title to birth being his dying mother's Bible with its inscription, "Guy Halifax, Gentleman," period for which it was written: the paragraph counted for much in the

They were married quite privately, neither having any near kindred. Besides, John held

strongly the opinion that so solemn a festival as marriage is only desecrated by outward show. And so, one golden autumn morning, Ursula walked quietly up the Abbey aisle in her plain white muslin gown; and John and she plighted their faithful vows, no one being present except the Jessops and I. Then they went away for a brief holiday-went away without either pomp or tears-husband and wife together.

Dickens describes myriads of weddings, a glad, youthful one, when David Copperfield takes his Dora; a proud and smouldering one when Mr. Dombey

married Edith. Here almost the entire marriage service is quoted. Our Mutual Friend has the account of Bella's quiet marriage to John Rokesmith, and there is the sad account of the elder Miss Pecksniff's blighted troth in Martin Chuzzlewit.

Robert Grant's Unleavened Bread opens with a marriage at which Selma White and Lewis Babcock are guests, and their betrothal is ratified on their way home. Selma's first marriage is dismissed with a sentence; her second is given more space. Littleton proposes one afternoon immediately after her divorce becomes known to him, and thoughtlessly adds: "If I had my wish, darling, we should be married to-night, and I would carry you away from here forever." To which Selma responds, slowly: "It would be very nice-and very simple. You wouldn't think any the worse of me, Wilbur, if I were to marry you ́ to-night?"

It was already late in the afternoon, so that the prospects of obtaining a license did not seem favourable. Still it happened that Littleton knew a clergyman of his own faith-Unitarian-in Benham, whom he suggested. They found him at home, and by diligent personal effort on his part the necessary legal forms were complied with and they were made husband and wife three hours before the departure of the evening train for New York. The suddenness and surprise of it all made Selma feel as if on wings.

Honora's second marriage, in Churchill's A Modern Chronicle is very similar. Chiltern calls for her at six one night, and takes her to a minister's home. As the license and other papers are pro

duced, Chiltern says: "In order to save time, I wish to tell you Mrs. Leffingwell has been divorced." To which the clergyman replies smoothly: "Unfortunate mistakes will occur in life. Say no more about it." And his pronouncement: "Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," falls with startling vividness on Honora's ears.

In The Story of the Gadsbys Kipling does a study of hymeneal hysteria in depicting the big, brave, brawny Gadsby turning seven sorts of a coward on his wedding day, fumbling the ring, choking over the responses, losing forever the respect of his best friend, as he betrays at within him. every step the frightened, cowering soul

There is a wedding scene in James Lane Allen's A Summer in Arcady whose memory lingers long. It was a runaway marriage, close to midnight of that day when Hillary and Daphne had "trusted themselves alone with Nature, who cares only for life." They had crossed the river to get into another State, and their boatman helped them as he had helped countless others, offered himself as a witness, and directed them to the squire's. This marriage service, a purely legal form, was told off in the tone in which the squire was wont to swear a witness in the court room: "Each of you do solemnly promise that you will love, honour and obey each other as a dutiful husband and wife; and, forsaking all others, cleave to each other alone until it shall please Almighty God to separate you by death. To this do you both agree?"

Hillary said "I do," thickly, nervously; Daphne, with a pathetic sense of loneliness and of the unlikeness of all this to a real wedding such as she had dreamed of. And then the squire opened his desk that held his rolls of marriages:

There they were the rolls of the secret marriages of the people of Kentucky. Thousands upon thousands of couples. Many of them not much more than children, sometimes one couple a day, sometimes three or four. A long, gay pageant; some less gay than others, being desperately pursued; some less gay, not being guiltless; some most sorrowfully, bent upon the office of having the marriage

performed and the date of it set back for the sake of the poor little life soon to appear in the world. If Daphne had but known it, hidden away on one of those yellow sheets were the names of her own father and mother.

Robert Herrick's Together opens with perhaps the most memorably significant wedding scene among modern novels. "She stood before the minister who was to marry them, very tall and straight-" is the opening sentence of the long chapter, and the unity of time is marvellously handled, as her mind and the reader's move along the seconds with the time and space annihiliation of a moment's dreaming. "I, John, take thee," and she hears not only this man's voice, but the voices of all the men who have so vowed as solemnly. Her voice as she repeats: "-and hereby I plight thee my troth," sinks to a whisper as of prayer, and she muses with the swiftness of those spaceannihilating dreams, of all pasts and presents and all the future, of the broken contracts that were pledged as earnestly -above all, of the utter strangerhood of this man whom she is marrying.

"And who gives this woman in marriage?" As the clergyman asks the question she feels, resentfully, the primitiveness of the formula that binds a woman from one master to another as a perpetual possession, for she gives herself. The endlessness of the time that passes as the man makes his vows-the strangeness of her own clear voice as she makes her responses. She is still seeking for the answer to the fury of questionings that press her hard, when she hears the stir behind her, and knows the service is ended.

The thing was done; the priest's words of exhortation were superfluous. All else that

concerned married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was done, as ordained by the church, according to the rules of society. Now it was for Man and Wife to make of it what they would-or could. It was over, the fine, old, barbaric ceremony, the passing of the irredeemable contract between man and woman, the public proclamation of

eternal union. Henceforth they were man and wife before the law, before their kind-one and one, and yet not two.

Thus together they passed out of the church.

The solemn institution of marriage is still regarded by the majority as changeless and unalterable. To the minority who seek out truth whatever it is and dare to question all things, even the unalterableness of that most human ordinance, marriage, the fact that, of all civilised institutions, marriage is changing its form and spirit most rapidly, has become one of the axioms of sociology. If any defiant protestor against this statement desires food for honest thought, let him consider this, that fifty years ago, such a chapter on the Marriage Service as Mr. Herrick wrote in Together could not have been written except by a very few men and perhaps two women who did not write it. The individual right to happiness had not then quite dared to attack the man-made and God-attributed citadel of Marriage; the idea that a human mistake in choice had an egoistic and racial right to rectification was too new to stand against the unsunderable bondage that man and the Church had made of marriage. Men had not thought it worth while to question women and women had not dared openly to question men in relation to marriage and happiness. A little study of wedding scenes in fiction, let pass the ensuing wedded life, is bound to convince the honest doubter that the interpretation of the Wedding Day to-day is not that of even a quarter of a century ago. As a matter of fact the Wedding Day was not interpreted until recent years; it was merely accepted with all its traditions, chief among which was the Carlylian creed of Duty and Renunciation, two very doubtful aids to the progress of the world. According to the modern creed the Wedding Day is only the beginning of life, and, according to the modern school of novelists, a terribly doubtful beginning at best. All of which, being true, is not an unhealthy fact to have made clear.