society." Lovers of books, booksellers, and albums of eighteenth-century days of well-to-do folk are the best and most likely sources. But the print collector must come armed with some knowledge more than rudimentary to disinter the valuable from the trivial. There is much chaff and very little wheat in the field of print collecting.
Prices.—With regard to prices, he will very soon learn, after a score of purchases cautiously made, what are, roughly, the market values of the particular class of prints upon which he has set his heart. Careful study of printsellers' catalogues will give him some idea of what is most sought after. As a rule, he will never pick up his most golden bargains from catalogues. Now and again a good item will appear, but the printseller's regular clientèle will swoop down upon it like hawks and bear it away before he has had time to call round at the shop. Some of the most eager collectors wire at once to the printseller to secure a bargain. It is the experience of the writer that it is lucky if one's name begins with either of the first three letters of the alphabet, as the catalogue in such cases arrives a day or so before one's unknown competitors in the remainder of the alphabet.
As to the values of mezzotints of the best period of the eighteenth century by McArdell, Valentine Green, and J. R. Smith, the colour prints of William Watson and of Ryland, or the masterpieces of Rembrandt, of Dürer, and of the German School, or half a hundred other names that are well known to every printseller and every collector throughout the country, there is
