be followed by the execrations of posterity, and the lasting curses of injured humanity. If there is any meaning in all these, may not the Sexagenarian, who puts the questions, humbly hope, that he may be permitted to lay in his claim for a small share of the meed of praise, or, at least, the approbation of the natives, should he be able to establish to their satisfaction, by the same method of reasoning, the following facts, which, indeed, he most willingly submits to their just and impartial decision. Who was it, he would say to the residenters in his more immediate neighbourhood, that not only first planted that useful tree, the PRINTING PRESS, on our native soil,* but who, for so many years afterwards, gave that potent and mighty engine for weal, or for woe, according as its energies are properly or improperly directed, a direction and impulse in such a way, as to call down upon his exertions, from time to time, those numerous and highly respectable encomiums, -very slender specimens of which can only be given in these pages ?+ Who was it, he would say, that first established that great and wonderfully illuminating process, the Book Trade, in Dunbar (after the short experiment of another person had been tried, and had failed), upon any thing like a permanent foundation, now more than forty years ago, and that, at a time, when such a thing was so much wanted in this quarter of the county,-laying in his native town, at that early * The first Printing Press erected in the County of East Lothian, was that set up by me in Dunbar, in 1795, and which, for reasons that it may not be difficult to guess, was afterwards removed to Haddington, being the county town. + These specimens, in order not to run out this chapter to an undue length, must be brought in afterwards, in such a way, and at such places, as may be found suitable for them. My predecessor, Mr Smart's, stay in Dunbar was very short, he having come to it, I should imagine, some time after the commencement of the Eighties, and leaving it again, altogether, at the term of Whitsunday, 1788. Previous to his time, the mental wants of the lieges, had been supplied in the same manner as some of our neighbouring county villages are at present, by the merchants, or dealers in other articles; but I do not think, that my father, who was one of them, entered much into the bookselling way, until the time of the short interregnum, betwixt Mr S.'s leaving the town and my being capable of supplying his place, during which time he would, no doubt, do what F period, the foundation of that useful reservoir for accumulating, and copious source for diffusing, the means of knowledge and useful information, throughout the adjoining parishes, which, at no great distance of time afterwards, viz., in the year 1809, had increased, or, rather, been augmented, to the amazing extent for a country collection, in a small country town, of "upwards of three thousand five hundred volumes !” under the name of "THE DUNBAR and COUNTRY CIRCULATING LIBRARY;"* and opening up, otherwise, those many irrigating streams of mental improvement, in the shape of his numerous auctions t-his strenuous, persevering, and successful endeavours in soliciting and obtaining subscriptions for works of real and permanent utility, which has been the he could, by keeping up a supply of the more saleable articles, to keep the place (for that seemed to have been a favourite object with him) open for me. As an evidence, how far some of our merchants, in these days, required a little more general information themselves, as well as the indolent manner in which (no doubt, partly for want of books), they spent their time, I shall relate an anecdote which, it is likely, some of my readers may have heard before, viz., that, when a certain merchant heard some person talking of "Hervey's Works," which, at that time, must have been much known, and held in very general estimation, as they have long been since, he hastily, and rather pettishly replied," Hervey's Works! I never knew him do any thing but sit on the blue stane at his door, all his life,”—meaning, thereby, old John Harvey, who kept shop under, I believe, figure 4, in that house immediately adjoining the Manse, on the north side, where it still remains; but what has become of the blue stane, or whether it is still to be found on the spot, I know not. • I sce that we opened our first Circulating Library, with a Catalogue, printed by Mr John Taylor of Berwick-upon-Tweed, under the firm of J. & G. Miller, on the 20th November, 1789; but, the first catalogue printed on my own account, was that published in October 1791, and is what I mean as more particularly referring to, as above. This catalogue was, upon the whole, pretty respectable to begin with, and which had, indeed, increased, by the winter of 1809, to the number abovementioned. There can be no doubt, as to this point, for I have a copy of the catalogue still in my possession, which I shall be ready to show to any lady or gentleman, who wishes to be informed, as to the nature of a selection, from which every thing of an indelicate nature, or immoral tendency, in as far as they could be ascertained, were carefully excluded. My auctions in the country, I see by my reminiscences, commenced so early as September 1791, and having been continued occasionally ever since, almost down to the present period, or so long as I continued in the book trade, the inhabitants of our neigi.bouring, and more remote, villages, scattered over the country, must have, all along, been supplied with a plentiful treat of mental food, and that of the most useful and wholesome, as well as variegated description, to suit all tastes and fancies, at a cheap and easy rate. Of this, I shall produce one instance that will, no doubt, astonish some of my friends, among the present race of country booksellers, as it did, at the means of carrying the blessings of general and useful knowledge, at a cheap and easy rate, to the most obscure cottage and hamlet in the county, making East Lothian, distinguished among the surrounding districts, for her superior facilities and means of obtaining information; and that, long before itinerating libraries had been heard of among its inhabitants, or, the business of canvassing had, as it now is, been reduced to a profession ;—giving to the county of his birth, a place she had never before enjoyed, in the annals of literature, and lighting up, once more, the Lamp of Lothian,* in a manner very different from that in which it had been wont to shine, in the now venerable, but then venerated and hallowed fane, of our provincial capital, in the more benighted, superstitious, and less enquiring days of our forefathers ?— Who was it, he would farther say, that followed up these time, no less a personage than that great and enterprising bookseller, Mr Constable himself, viz., that the writer of this, who must, at that period, 1805, &c., have been in the hey-day of exertion, and youthful ardour, got from the publishers, first Mr Thomson Bonar, and more latterly Messrs A. Constable, & Co., no less a quantity than forty-two of the large, and seventy-six of the small paper copies, being 118 in all, of Forsyth's Beauties of Scotland! —not a bad number for a country sale, when it is considered, that the large paper copy retailed at Five Guineas, and the small at Three Pounds Fifteen Shillings, and yet the whole, while in course of publication, were almost all subscribed for. But this is only one instance of his success in the way of selling books in parts and by numbers, a business almost unknown, or, at least, very little practised by others, in those days; for, were old Mr Taylor of Berwick, alive to testify, he would, no doubt, express his surprise, at the astonishing number of his Ostervald's Bible, for which also, the writer procured subscribers, while the edition 1790 was in course of issuing from the press.-Of Knox's History of the Reformation, published by Mr Hugh Inglis, West Port, Edinburgh, at the time I commenced business, or rather previous to my having commenced on my own account, I see, by a list of subscribers' names still in my possession, I also sold, the goodly number of nearly four score of copies. But the looking over that list, dated 28th October, 1790, makes me melancholy to think, how few of that number now remain, who, at that time, " kept the world awake," if not "with lustre," at least with useful exertion, and "with noise." I do not mention those numbers as any way surprising in these days, when the number trade is so extensively cultivated, and the canvassing business so much followed after; but let any one look back to my situation, and the times I then lived in, and then form his ideas of the importance, or nonimportance of the transactions here recorded. "The Church of the Franciscans, in Haddington, was, in 1355, so magnificent, that," we are told by Fordun and John Major, "it was styled Lucerna Laudona, THE LAMP OF LOTHIAN, from the lamps kept constantly burning in it, which rendered it visible at a great distance during the night. more local and circumscribed operations, by that more excursive and enlarged attempt to be useful, in the means that Providence still continued to augment, and put in his power, in the way of his profession, by the multitudinous host of CHEAP TRACTS, upwards of a hundred thousand in number, that issued from the Dunbar press, in 1802-3, near the beginning of the present century, or about thirty years ago? -The far known, and still more widely extended CHEAP MAGAZINE, that emanated from the Haddington press, in 1813 and 1814, the prospectus for which, I see by the date of the circular now before me, (July 27, 1812,) made its appearance, just twenty years ago;-THE MONTHLY MONITOR, OR PHILANTHROPIC MUSEUM, which followed in its wake, and may be considered in the light of a continuation of that work, in 1815;-and the new modelled and improved edition of "The Affecting History of Tom Bragwell," that appeared at a time, when, as will be seen by the testimony hereafter to be adduced, it was so much wanted, towards the close of 1821, being nearly the end of another decade, or a little more than ten years from the period in which I now write-all of which, it will be observed, having the same object in view, the prevention of crime, and the consequent peace, comfort, security, and happiness of society? And Who, it may be still farther asked, was it, that, when the minds of his brethren in the humbler classes of society, had taken such a praiseworthy direction, in the growing taste which was beginning to prevail among them for scientific information, and a craving for, that most sublime and noble of all pursuits, the studies of nature, and a thirst for the knowledge of the wonders and beauties of creation-Who was it, he would say, that appeared once more on the stage of literature, but a few years since, in the pages of his POPULAR PHILOSOPHY, in which, it will be seen, his efforts were not awanting, by taking advantage of the current that had so happily set in, and endeavouring, to the utmost extent of his abilities, to draw the attention of his juvenile readers, from the sublimities and mysteries of the things that are seen, to the GREAT UNSEEN, within the veil,-that Great Mind, from. whence all our knowledge emanates-from Nature, up to Nature's God? To all these several queries, he humbly conceives there will be but one answer, and that answer, he confidently hopes, will be in favour of the Sexagenarian. It must, therefore, be abundantly evident, that, although the writer of this has not, like one of his contemporaries that he formerly alluded to, astounded the nations with the shouts of his triumphs, and the noise of his victories—that, although he has not, like another that might have been mentioned, made the tables of the great groan beneath the weight of his literary feasts, or made himself any way conspicuous, as a caterer for the amusement of the rich-that, although, like a third, whom he might also have mentioned, he may never have set the little circle in the poor man's cottage in a roar, by the piquancy of his wit, or comicality of his jests, or made them draw more close to the fireside, by the horrors of some terrific imaginary detail; yet, he too, it must be observed, has made some little noise in the prosecution of the otherwise, almost "noiseless tenor of his way" in the world. That he too, has contributed something to the "Welcome Repast" of the humble labourer,—and that, there is some reason to believe, that many a little circle in the more lowly dwellings of men, have been at once amused and benefited by his efforts. Indeed, the communication of "A Labourer, and Constant Reader," the post mark of which bears witness that it came from the place from which it is dated, viz., at Annan, 11th October, 1813, is an evidence of this, as may be learned from the first eight lines of this homely, but pithy address, to the Editor, under the head of "The Labourer's Repast; or, the Cheap Magazine," not having room to copy more of a production, which certainly does no less honour to the discriminating powers, than to the poetical abilities of the writer : "With infinite pleasure, your work I survey, And earnestly wish it may last; After bearing the burden, and heat of the day, |