Can I better take a motto for my essay, than by reviving my memory of Academic Latin, and making , courtly and laurel-crowned, say for me ? For you may translate these words, "It is delightful to have been a Collector"; and although the graceful Roman only applied them to "Olympian dust," their philosophy is broader than this. Among the keenest pleasures of life in hope, in acquisition, memory, there is hardly one to surpass the Collector's joy. His field is the world; the objects of his desire range indifferently from blackened postage stamps to Greek vases and diamonds;- if he be a Christian, immortality suggests to him the glorious possibility of unending explorations in the star-sown depths of space.

And yet it grieves me that there is no more dignified and sonorous name to apply

And since, as you may have suspected, like in his "Walden,"

"I do not propose to write an Ode to Dejection, but crow as lustily as Chanticleer on his perch,"

I am well aware that to sing the Collector's praises in any large American city may appear to a purely critical mind as superfluous a charity as sending ice to Labrador or fashion-plates to . For many years the French have had a world-wide reputation as the most enthusiastic and universal collectors on the earth.[1]  But I think that if the geographers

Without further preface, let me address myself to your general good sense, and begin by clearing away some of the misconceptions at which I have hinted.

First: there is the sneer of the materialist and utilitarian (they call themselves practical men) that the only true collecting is the collecting of that which is the real power of the world and the solid basis of human life, i.e. money. There are people everywhere to whom the various hobbies and fancies which imply or induce the Collector's art appear not only worthless but injurious. They dissipate precious time. They absorb productive energy. They weaken the fiber of business pursuits. So such critics talk; and the serene assurance with which they press the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant into their argument against the Collector causes Plutus to rejoice that in their day his altars will never lack a savory and sufficient sacrifice, and Pluto to smile at the victims who are daily

Again: scientific men of a certain grade are very fond of saying that a Collector is never a Student. They look down on those who gather and arrange, and complete in series perhaps the very objects to which they themselves give the most exhaustive investigation, as men of an inferior capacity and aim. But I think that a Collector can hardly fail to become a Student, unless his collecting is the mere result of a vaccination for a fashionable craze or popular fancy, and depends more on his loose purse-strings than his personal application. "Original research" is not the only thing in Science, Art or Literature. At the lowest estimate of his value, the Collector needs much acquired knowledge to supply intelligently the materials whose collocation furnishes the high and severe scientist with food for thought. And sometimes the Collector thinks for himself with the most valuable results. and were indefatigable collectors; and let no man, perhaps unworthy to loose the latchet of their shoes, essay to pluck the laurels from their heads.

But time forbids me to linger in apologies. The noble art of Collecting appeals to several sentiments which no one will maintain to be less than useful, not to say indispensable, to the world.

There is the principle of Order, for one. The rows of shining coins, in sequence of their dates-herbarium-sheets of flowers, in the natural links of their chains of beauty -pamphlets in their historical connection-prints marshalled by schools of engravers or the technique of their execution-shells as their spire or valves or lips direct their places in the cabinet -prehistoric arrowheads pointing in the line of their development-all these things suggest the presence and value of "Heaven's First Law." Some men can live in confusion, chance-medley and clutter. Their thread of life is a snarl, and their destiny chaos. Such men could never become true Collectors; or, becoming such, the tangle of their existence would grow clear. For a collector must be orderly or be smothered by his riches. Without order, he can never know the extent and worth of his treasures nor labor intelligently for their increase. Sir Walter Scott has pictured his Antiquary

Then again, there is the love and struggle for Completeness.[2] 

The collector always has gaps to be filled, links to be supplied, series to be finished; and as soon as one

Two other examples rise to my mind, as I am writing this, to exemplify the way in which many things work together for the collector's

Once more: the Collector learns the immense value which trifling things, almost useless as individuals, assume when studied in large, orderly and complete series. Nothing would seem more worthless than scraps of pottery, -not the perfect jugs and vases, but such potsherds as served Job in his cutaneous misery, or furnished the Hebrew prophets with effective symbols of contempt. Yet a collector of these from the rubbish heaps and the dust-bins of the world could assist in demonstrating a law which is just being worked out, the Evolution of Ornament, a remarkable example of Mr. Darwin's theory; while the investigation of their materials. firing and glazing might add another chapter to the keramic art. And Paleaographists

Still again; until you become a collector, you can never know in its full force the fact of the richness and fullness of even the narrowest corner of creation in which you may exercise your art. The microscope sees an ocean in a drop and a world in a pinch of dust; and the eye at the lens will grow old before their marvels are exhausted. So, in the most limited sphere, the Collector grows into astonishment at its ever widening possibilities. The new is found to be old; all published catalogues and manuals are seen to be incomplete, and every collector must be his own authority. Then too, he discovers that what he had supposed to be made in a few ways or on a few types, has, in reality, in the ever active inventiveness of man, received a kaleidoscopic complexity. The

The fervor of the Collector not unfrequently reaches a height which deserves to be called heroic. Twenty-one years ago, a pleasant gossipy volume The Bric-a-Brac Hunter was published by Major H. Byng Hall, who spent most of his life in the service of the English Crown as a "Silver Greyhound" or King's Messenger. His duties, of course, carried him all over the world; and in every country, all his leisure seems to

I draw from my memory a few examples, out of hundreds which I might give, of the whims and fancies of Collectors. The mother of the present Czar of Russia collected perfume-bottles, and the last King of Portugal left a shady library of books suppressed by the Public Censor. Gladstone had a fancy for enamels, especially on snuff-boxes; and his treasures were exhibited at South Kensington some years ago. A letter has just been published in fac-simile by Bernard Quaritch, which Gladstone wrote September 9, 1896, regarding the rare books which he had drawn into his library. Sarah Bernhardt collects men's head-wear or hats, from the Spanish sombrero to the Indian's crown of feathers; and also women's belts, in which she has the foundation of a fortune in the gold and gems which decorate many of them. Lady Malet has a cabinet of 1ooo pairs of shoes; and she can illustrate the gamut of foot-wear from dancing-slippers to snow-shoes. A New York lady possesses a similar and rival collection. George Godwin of London has a house-full of historic chairs; and the visitor

Looking at the great world of Collectors, we see that they may be divided into several classes, according to the means which they employ in the accumulation of their treasures. There is, especially at the great centers of human life, one sort of Collectors, privileged by fortune to be the aristocracy of the craft. For them are Raphaels and Correggios, Caxtons and first folios of Shakespeare, engraved gems, cut crystal and jade, classical marbles and mediaeval manuscripts. They are the gods and sit above the thunder. Sometimes they are benefactors, opening their collections to the public eye, or letting them flow at last into the great reservoirs of museums or libraries. Sometimes they are merely the selfish purchasers of the best

At the other end of the scale, are the collectors who by stealthy and secretive ways, keen eyes, a natural gift of dissimulation and an inexplicable favoritism of fortune, get all things without money and without price. Such was Snuffy Davie of Jonathan Oldbuck's tradition; such are the men who discover prizes in the book-boxes of the Paris Quais or the dirty rubbish of the Seven Dials. They are as inimitable to the ordinary collector as the millionaires who gratify their fancies without stint or hindrance. Common mortals can neither descend to these depths nor climb successfully to those heights.

But by far the largest class of collectors is of those who combine a reasonable expenditure with sagacity, careful study and much personal exertion; and it must be said that as the more of the last element enters into the combination, the better it is for their collections and themselves. The best artist still mixes his colors with brains. A collection ought to take a personal character from its owner, and the details of its richness and order should be the details of his own life.

So there have been collectors to whom London, their home, was the world: and they reappear in their collections, sometimes gigantic, always characteristic, relating to their greater self. The Guildhall, the Soane and British Museums have absorbed and still preserve much of this work. A collection illustrating Pennant's book on London, which I have studied in the British Museum, was made by an antiquarian named Crowle at a cost of thirty-five thousand dollars. The same national institution has obtained a similar collection, exhibited at South Kensington in 1880, and which was accumulated by a man who, during a long life was a hard-working official of the city, and who, little by little, gathered an almost incredible number of maps, plans, drawings and views of the metropolis. Its price is a secret, but must have much exceeded Crowle's. The largest collection of this kind to-day in private hands is said to be the property of a lamp-seller in the Strand.

The most famous objects of collection, and among the noblest too, are books. In every country and language, still, books. And I do not here speak merely of their collection as the working materials of a literary life, but of books collected as books. Innumerable are the whims and lines and varieties among book-collectors; and very cordial is the scorn with which these specialists in print and paper sometimes regard their neighbors of a different type. You must read the many pleasant volumes written now-a-days about books, to learn the names and hobbies of these men. There are "Caxton men, and tall-copy men, and first edition men, and Russia leather and Levant morocco men." There are those who affect black-letter, or 16th century vignettes, or books from the Aldine or Elzevir presses. There are others who never touch a folio, and others still who would not collect the choicest duodecimo to save it from the paper-mill. Some give their lives and libraries to editions of Shakespeare, Dante, Boccaccio. Bindings or book-plates give their value to volumes in the eyes of certain collectors; and one distinct variety of the tribe collects books which bear the

The Collector's work in connection with books takes still another and most interesting form. For more than a hundred years there have been bookish men who have sought to make collections to illustrate some particular book or favorite author. For this purpose,

As I have said, Americans have earned abroad the reputation of being the most miscellaneous and money-scattering of all collectors; and already much lamentation is heard in England and on the Continent at the irreplaceable treasures of art and literature which the new wealth of the United States is drawing to itself. When we are as old as our foreign cousins are to-day, we shall no doubt have done as great things in book-collecting; -in some respects we have perhaps reached their level now-but I have never heard of an extended book in American hands like the copy of Clarendon and Burnet made by Mr. Sutherland of London at an expense of $60,000, and now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Mr. Rees, who mentions

And this leads me to say what may best perhaps be put in the form of a digression here, that however high may be the pulse of the collector's zeal, there are many circles in which he must walk circumspectly and moderate to others' eyes the fever which he feels. For collecting, like sovereignty, has its unscrupulous ambitions. If Russia longs for Bulgaria or Turkey, who would leave her alone with the unguarded object of her desire ? She is likely to steal it anyway, even before the face of all Europe. So the collector,

All this is preliminary to the remark that of all thievish book-collectors the meanest

To return for a moment to the subject of collecting, let me repeat that here especially a shadow always seems to rest on whatever does not show the collector incorporated

A gentleman of French descent, a fine linguist and artist, bred in an atmosphere of books, was, all his life, a student and admirer of the old chronicler Froissart. He gathered a valuable library of editions of this author, his commentators and the literary illustrations of his works. His own copy of Froissart was extended to more than a dozen times its original size by everything of portrait, print, map or autograph which could supply pictorial or verbal elucidation of the text. Separate title-pages were illuminated in the highest style of the art, and, from prolonged study, made correct in every detail of color, ornament or costume, to correspond with the exact chronology of their places in the book. All this was the work of the possessor's own hand. Such a collection was not sealed from

Let me turn away, however, from the Collector's field in human history, art and literature,--for, grand as these things are, they have their limits,-to the boundless spaces and uncounted forms of Nature. Let me, as introduction, venture on a quotation from an essay by an old Autograph-Hunter. He says: "My attention was once called to a boy "just able to walk, and scarcely old enough "to talk who possessed (to use an oft-heard "phrase) 'a perfect mania for collecting.' "He would watch closely every attempt made "to light a lamp or a cigar, and would eagerly "search for the match that was thrown aside. "Such as he found, he carefully hoarded "and arranged. In his infantile mind there "seemed to be some idea of classification. "Some of the burnt matches in his possession "were 'rare specimens,' as was shown by the "care with which he guarded them. Others "were more common and not so highly prized. "By his actions he showed that there was in "his mind an ideal burnt match - a very rare

I believe this last statement too; and I think that our science of education shows its own infantile condition that it does not yet insist upon what should be one of its foundation principles that every boy and girl should be trained as a collector. See how the collector's instinct reveals itself so extensively in the passion for postage stamps and coins, and think what this might become if directed toward the infinite multitude of wonderful creations, surely waiting, if there can be any expression of desire and hope in nature, for the collector's touch and study! How many of us were told in childhood of the numbers and beauty of the tiny shells under the forest leaves, or taught to gather and compare and arrange in order the tender and delicate mosses and ferns? How many were intelligently trained to discriminate the sea-weeds and the Spring flowers? How many learned

The literature of Collecting would form a large and interesting library, in which almost every hobby would have its practical manuals, its eulogies, and even its poetry. It would include two American essays of widely differing style and fame. Mark Twain's paper on Collecting is perhaps his most irreverent production, lacerating with its shameless wit those tender sensibilities of the human heart by which, as I have tried to show you to-night the Collector is allied to the noblest of his race. Hawthorne's wonderful chapter on A Virtuoso's Collection exhibits indeed an unattainable ideal, but blends a lofty inspiration with the charms of the great master' style. Following this on a lower level, a charming English writer has sketched a collection of books such as might, but never will be made;-books which have the tenderest

But I must take a text from the Roll-Call of Faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews. For the time would fail me to tell of the collectors of pottery and porcelain, lacquers and enamels, curios and bronzes, miniatures and rings, snuff-boxes and fans, lace and paper, Venice glass and Continental currency, Apostle spoons and Egyptian scarabaei, coins and medals, walking-sticks and prehistoric implements, eggs and sea-weeds, microscopic preparations and meteorites, minerals and cameos, carved ivories and missals. I could fairly exhaust the substantives of the dictionary before my catalogue was at an end. Of one and all of these fields for the collector, it may be said that there is in them much intellectual profit and more pleasure; and one must be

I have, however, to set up one finger-post of warning, before I close. The fact-shall I call it Law or Original Sin?-of Supply and Demand operates here. The Collector is a known and recognized element in the commercial as in the intellectual world. And so the subtle art of fraudulent men lies in wait for him at every turn. Birmingham makes Egyptian gods in blue glaze and scarabaei by the thousand for him. The potter of the nineteenth century simulates the ware of the fifteenth and sixteenth-cracks it, crazes it, begrimes it, to sell it to him as a genuine antique. In garrets all over Europe, hungry canvas-daubers are painting Rembrandts and Claudes to hang upon his walls. The silver and gold vessels of the middle ages and the cameos of the Augustan period are counterfeited in his behalf. Alexander and the Caesars never minted so many coins as spring, with the ancient images and superscriptions, from the worshops of modern Italy. You may well refuse to buy a mummy

If I have spoken to any ripe collectors and adepts here to-night, I can foresee the immediate result of my words. They will go home, unlock some precious repository, and gloat a

"The days decay as flower of grass,

The years as silent waters flow;

All things that are, depart, alas I

As leaves the winnowing breezes strow;

And still, while yet, full-orbed and slow,

New suns the old horizon climb,

Old Time must reap, as others sow;

We are the gleaners after Time

"We garner all the things that pass,

We harbor all the winds may blow;

As misers, we upstore, amass

All gifts the hurrying fates bestow;

Old chronicles of feast and show,

Old waifs of bygone rune and rhyme,

Old jests that made old banquets glow;

We are the gleaners after Time !

"We hoard old love of lad and lass,

Old flowers that in old gardens grow,

Old records writ in tomb and brass,

Old spoils of arrow-head and bow,

Old wrecks of old worlds' overthrow,

Old relics of Earth's primal slime,

All drift that wanders to and fro;

We are the gleaners after Time! "

[1] J. J. Osborne in Oddities of Paris, (Scribner, December, 1879), says: "There is nothing odder in Paris than the private collections, especially the cabinets of pictures. Had Raphael lived a thousand years, and painted day and night, he could not have covered the canvas shown in Paris as his works. Some of these collections contain the clothes of eminent people; others have buttons; others still have shoes; here are snuff-boxes; there are wigs; yonder are fire-irons. All sorts of trash have their idolaters, as I discover when I visit these queer nooks. I come away convinced there is nothing lost in this world. The earnest look, the important air, and the pride these people take in showing their collection, though it be only chessmen, is amusing."

[2] An essay on "A Noble Art" (Bookbinding), in The House Beautiful for January, 1897, speaks thus of Collecting in that line: "Like a few other pursuits which seem to thrall men with peculiar charms, it has the virtue of infinite possibilities. Perfection is unattainable. The field is limitless. He never can, nor does he really hope, to possess the fully rounded and complete collection, but there is always the glorious vista, and by " hitching his wagon to a star," he has the range and movement of celestial travel. He lies of nights and dreams of having on his oaken shelves Grolier and Maioli, and sees himself the object of the gloating eyes of the whole world of amateurs. He thinks of himself sometime in an indefinite and beatific future, the proud possessor of the perfect book, the crown of all the ages, with leaves of vellum, blackest ink and richest rubrication, its covers gilt, with cunning handiwork, and on its inner cover the significant "Ex Libris," that betokens it his own."

[3] "There is a book in the British Museum, which would have to many people a greater value than any other single volume in the world; it is a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigue, and it bears Shakespeare's autograph on a fly-leaf."-Hamilton W. Mabie's Books and Culture.

[4] A Monograph on Privately-Illustrated Books. A Plea for Bibliomania, by Daniel M. Tredwell. New York, W. E. Benjamin, 1891.

[5] See also Grant Allen's story, The Gold Wulfric.

[6] The essay, A Noble Art, already alluded to in a note, exaggerates, it is to be hoped, the kleptomaniac tendencies of the Book Collector, when it says of him; "He is altogether conscienceless, and would use the most questionable of methods to obtain his sinister ends. For one must know that 'all is fair in love and war and book-collecting,' provided only that he gains the end in view. Many a man of tried and serious virtue would barter soul and country, if only there were proper recompense in shape of incunabula or monk-made missal."

[7] The Pleasures of a Book- Worm, by J. Rogers Rees, [New York, Geo. J. Coombes, 1886], p. 47 to p. 81.

[8] Those who are planning a trip to Europe will do well to read, and those who have already journeyed in foreign lands will preserve their peace of mind, if they do not read, two articles: 1. Spurious Works of Art by J. C. Robinson in Nineteenth Century for November, 1891, and 2. Fashions and Counterfeits in Bric-a-Brac, by Sarah Cooper Hewitt, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine of June, 1892.