little by comparison as to the separate question on the negative price of the brute to his importer. He cares perhaps not very much more as to the separate question upon the affirmative return likely to arise for himself in the case of his exhibiting such a monster. Neither value taken singly was the practical reply to his anxieties. That reply was found in both values, taken in combination, the negative balanced against the affirmative. It was less important to hear that the cost had been £1,000, so long as the affirmative return was conjecturally assigned at little beyond £2,200, than to hear that the immediate cost to the importer had been £2,000, but with the important assurance that £5,000, at the very least, might be almost guaranteed from the public exhibition of so delicate a brute. The creature had not been brought from the Barbary States, our staple market for monsters, but from some part of Africa round the Cape; so that the cost had been unusually great. But the affirmative value, founded on the public curiosity, was greater; and, when the two terms in the comparison came into collision, then was manifested the excess of the affirmative value, in that one instance, as measured against the negative. An 66 encore" was hardly to be expected for a rhinoceros in the same generation; but for that once it turned out that a moderate fortune might be raised upon so brutal a basis. TURKISH HORSES. Pretty nearly at the same time, viz. about the year 1684, an experiment of the same nature was made in London upon an animal better suited to sale, but almost equally governed in its price by affirmative qualities. In this instance, however, the qualities lay in excess of beauty and docility, rather than of power and strange conformation. Three horses, of grace and

speed at that time without parallel in Western Europe, were brought over to England, and paraded before the

English court. Amongst others, Evelyn saw them, and thus commemorates the spectacle:- "December 17. Early in the morning, I went into St. James's Park to see three Turkish or Asian horses, newly brought over, and now first showed to his Majesty" (Charles II., who died about six weeks later). "There were" (had been) "four, but one of them died at sea, being three weeks coming from Hamborow. They were taken from a bashaw at the siege of Vienna, at the late famous raising that leaguer.18 I never beheld so delicate a creature as one of them was; of somewhat a bright bay; in all regards beautifull and proportion'd to admiration; spirited, proud, nimble; making halt, turning with that swiftnesse, and in so small a compass, as was admirable. With all this, so gentle and tractable, as call'd to mind what Busbequius speakes to the reproch of our groomes in Europe, who bring up their horses so churlishly as makes most of them retain their ill habits." Busbequius talks nonsense. This, and the notion that our Western (above all, our English) horses are made short-lived by luxurious stables, &c., are old "crazes" amongst ourselves. Mr. Edmond Temple, in his Peru, evidently supposes that, with worse grooming, and if otherwise sufficiently ill-treated, our English horses would live generally to the age of forty,—possibly, I add, of a thousand, which would be inconvenient. As to the conceit of Busbequius, it is notorious to Englishmen that the worsttempered horses in the world (often mere devils in malignity) are many of the native breeds in Hindostan, who happen, unfortunately for the hypothesis, to have oftentimes the very gentlest grooms. The particular horses brought over from the Turkish rout under Vienna, by their exquisite docility would seem to have been Arabs. The cross of our native breed by the Arab blood, which has since raised the English racer to perfection, was soon

after begun (I believe) under the patronage of the Godolphin family. From this era, when Arab velocity for a short burst had been inoculated upon English "bottom," or enduring energy, the Newmarket racer rose to a price previously unheard of in the annals of the horse. So low, however, was the affirmative standard at this period in England, so little had the latent perfections of the animal (the affirmative value) been developed, that of these matchless Arabians, sold on the terms of including the romantically gorgeous appointments for both horse and rider, even the finest was offered for five hundred guineas, and all three together for a thousand. This price had reference (as also in the case of the rhinoceros) exclusively to affirmative value.19

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PARADISE LOST. -Were you (walking with a foreigner in London) to purchase for eighteen pence a new copy of this poem, suppose your foreign friend to sting your national pride by saying: "Really, it pains me to see the English putting so slight a value upon their great poet as to rate his greatest work no higher than eighteen pence," how would you answer? Perhaps thus: "My friend, you mistake the matter. The price does not represent the affirmative value, the value derived from the power of the poem to please or to exalt; that would be valued by some as infinite, irrepresentable by money; and yet the resistance to its reproduction might be less than the price of a breakfast." Now here, the ordinary law of price exposes itself at once. It is the power, the affirmative worth, which creates a fund for any price at all; but it is the resistance, the negative worth, or what we call the cost, which determines how much shall be taken from that potential fund. In bibliographic records, there are instances of scholars selling a landed estate equal to an annual livelihood for ever, in order to obtain

a copy of one single book, viz. an ARISTOTLE. At this day, there are men whose estimate of Aristotle is not at all less. Having long since reached his lowest point of depression from the influence of sciolism and misconception, for at least fifty years Aristotle has been a rising author. But does any man pay an estate in exchange for Aristotle as now multiplied? Duval's in folio may be had for two guineas; the elder edition of Sylburgius in quarto may be had (according to our own juvenile experience) for ten guineas; and the modern Bipont by Buhle, only that it is unfinished, may be had for less than three. There is the reason for the difference between former purchasers and modern purchasers. The resistance is lowered; but the affirmative value may, for anything that is known, be still equal in many minds to that which it was in elder days, - and in some minds we know that it is. The fair way to put this to the test would be to restore the elder circumstances. Then the book was a manuscript; printing was an undiscovered art; so that merely the resistance value was much greater, since it would cost a much larger sum to overcome that resistance where the obstacle was so vast a mass of manual labor, than where the corresponding labor in a compositor would multiply, by the pressman's aid, into a thousand copies, and thus divide the cost amongst a thousand purchasers. But this was not all. The owner of a manuscript would not suffer it to be copied. He knew the worth of his prize; it had a monopoly value. And what is that? Monopoly value is affirmative value carried to extremity. It is the case where you press to the ultimate limit upon the desire of a bidder to possess the article. It is no longer a question, For how little might it be afforded? You do not suffer him to put that question. You tell him plainly, that although he might have it

copied for forty pounds, instead of sinking upon the original manuscript a perpetual estate yielding forty pounds annually, you will not allow it to be copied. Consequently you draw upon that fund which, in our days, so rarely can be drawn upon; viz. the ultimate esteem for the object, the last bidding a man will offer under the known alternative of losing it.

This alternative rarely exists in our days. It is rarely in the power of any man to raise such a question. Yet sometimes it is; and we will cite a case which is curious, in illustration. In 1812 occurred the famous Roxburghe sale, in commemoration of which a distinguished club was subsequently established in London. It was a library which formed the subject of this sale,- and in the series of books stood one which was perfectly unique in affirmative value. This value was to be the sole force operating on the purchaser; for as to the negative value, estimated on the resistance to the multiplication of copies, it was impossible to assign any: no price would overcome that resistance. The book was the VALDARFER* BOCCACCIO. It contained, not all the works of that author, but his Decameron, and, strange enough, it was not a manuscript, but a printed copy. The value of the book lay in these two peculiarities: 1st, it was asserted that all subsequent editions had been castrated with regard to those passages which reflected too severely on the Papal Church; 2dly, the edition, as being incorrigible in that respect, had been so largely destroyed, that, not without reason, the Roxburghe copy was believed to be unique. In fact, the book had not been seen during the two previous centuries; so that it was at length generally held to be a nonentity. And the biddings went on as they would

* Valdarfer was the printer.