If everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himselfthe most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, therewould be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way ofgetting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft andMystery of Second-hand Bookselling. If, further, one were allowed toselect and arrange the minor details—such, for instance, as the"pitch" and the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that,as regards the latter, the kind of bookselling should be neither toolofty nor too mean—that is to say, that one's ambition would notaspire to a great collector's establishment, such as one or two wemight name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; theseshould be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play thegames of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, wouldone choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, orone of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists whollyof three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes attwopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to besomewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance,willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in theobscurity of Kentish Town; a second-hand bookseller must not be so farremoved from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond thereach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be plantedin a busy thoroughfare—the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quickfootsteps, the swift current of anxious humanity are out of harmonywith the atmosphere of a second-hand bookshop. Some suggestion ofexternal repose is absolutely necessary; there must be some stillnessin the air; yet the thing itself belongs essentially to the city—noone can imagine a