Profits on books being cut down to a minimum,
these tradesmen find it almost impossible to live by the sale of books
alone, and are forced to couple this with some other kind of business.
The apparent risk involved in Murray's extraordinary spirit of adventure
was in reality diminished by the many checks which in his day operated
on competition, and by the high prices then paid for ordinary books. Men
were at that time in the habit of forming large private libraries, and
furnishing them with the sumptuous editions of travels and books of
costly engraving issued from Murray's press. The taste of the time has
changed. Collections of books have been superseded, as a fashion, by
collections of pictures, and the circulating library encourages the
habit of reading books without buying them. Cheap bookselling, the
characteristic of the age, has been promoted by the removal of the tax
on paper, and by the fact that paper can now be manufactured out of
refuse at a very low cost. This cheapness, the ideal condition for which
Charles Knight sighed, has been accompanied by a distinct deterioration
in the taste and industry of the general reader.
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