Class Three comprises the great army of what may be termed 'middle-class books.' They are bound usually in half-bindings, when they are not in the publisher's cloth, and are good, clean, _sound_, copies of such works as county histories, antiquarian books, sets of the learned societies' publications and of 'standard authors.' They are such stable and solid books as you will usually find in the libraries of the well-to-do middle classes. In short they are gilt-edged securities, and command a steady price in the market.
To Class Four may be assigned the volumes contained in the average second-hand bookseller's shop in this country. They are the [Greek: hoi polloi] among books, and for the most part they include the more frequent and more modern English works. Usually they are quite desirable copies, though frequently they lack a portrait or other plate, sometimes they have a torn or mounted title-page, or other imperfection. They are generally in cloth or calf bindings which are almost invariably somewhat decrepit, being either rubbed or perished, or cracked at the joints. They are dusty and rather unkempt, and fox-marks are common, for such volumes have passed through many hands and have not always been accorded the care that is due to good books. But it is here that one comes across books 'in the original boards uncut,' and, if expense be no object to you, you may often raise such purchases to a higher class.
Books in Class Five are the outcasts of the book-world, being those decrepit volumes which stack the bookstalls and barrows in the larger towns. They are the weedings of auction sales and shops, books that are not worth cataloguing by the dealer. Like human beings they have drifted through life with all its vicissitudes, knowing many masters and earning the gratitude of none. And so at length, deprived even of a home, they find their way into the streets, where they are soon reduced to wreckage.
At first sight it would seem that they owe their situation to their quality, both intrinsic and extrinsic--that they are valueless either as literature or as specimens of book-production, or that they are imperfect or odd volumes. In many cases this may be true, but in general it is not so. The wrecks of handsomely produced books of high-class literature are common on the bookstalls and barrows, as all collectors of modest means are aware. They owe their situation _chiefly to inconsiderate handling_ and to the carelessness of their successive owners.