given to later generations by means of the written or the printed word. A systematised method of book-production we find first in Alexandria, where it had been developed, if not originally instituted, by the intelligent and all-powerful interest of the Ptolemaic kings, but there appears to be no evidence that, even in Alexandria, which for the greater part of two centuries was the great book-producing mart of the world, was there any practice of compensation for authors. It is to be borne in mind, however, in this connection, that, with hardly an exception, the manuscripts produced in Alexandria were copies of books accepted as classics, the works of writers long since dead. For the editors of what might be called the Alexandrian editions of Greek classics, compensation was provided in the form of _honoraria_ from the treasury of the Museum library or of salaried positions in the Museum Academy. In Rome, during the Augustan period, we find record of a well organised body of publishers utilising connections with Athens, with Asia Minor, and with Alexandria, for the purpose of importing Greek manuscripts and of collecting trained Greek scribes, and carrying on an active trade in the distribution of books not only with the neighbouring cities of Italy, of Spain, and of Gaul, but with such far off corners of the empire as the Roman towns in Britain. There are not a few references in the literature of this period, and particularly in the productions of society writers like Martial and Horace, to the relations of authors with their publishers and to the business interests retained by authors in the sale of their books. This Augustan age presents, in fact, the first example in the history of publishing, of a body of literature, produced by contemporary writers, being manifolded and distributed under an effective publishing and bookselling machinery, so as to reach an extensive and widely separated reading public. When the Roman gentleman in his villa near Massilia (in Gaul), Colonia (on the Rhine), or Eboracum (in far off Britain), is able to order through the imperial post copies of the latest ode of Horace or satire of Martial, we have the beginnings of an effective publishing organisation. It is at this time also that we first find record of the names of noteworthy publishers, the bookmakers in Athens and in Alexandria having left their names unrecorded. It is the period of Atticus, of Tryphon, and of the Sosii. Concerning the matter of the arrangements with the authors, or the extent of any compensation secured by them, the information is at best but scanty and often confusing. It seems evident, however, that, apart from the aid afforded by imperial favour, by the interest of some provincial ruler of literary tendencies, or by the bounty of a wealthy private patron like Mæcenas, the rewards of literary producers were both scanty and precarious. With the downfall of the Roman Empire, the organised book-trade of Rome and of the great cities of the Roman provinces came to an end. This trade had of necessity been dependent upon an effective system of communication and of transportation, a system which required for its maintenance the well built and thoroughly guarded roads of the empire; while it also called for the existence of a wealthy and cultivated leisure class, a class which during the periods of civil war and of barbaric invasions rapidly disappeared. Long before the reign of the last of the Roman emperors, original literary production had in great part ceased and the trade in the books of an earlier period had been materially curtailed;...