Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/410

370 he says, "generally, printed in the ordinary way, only sell 500 or 1000 copies, and periodical publications would be ruinous. Nothing but a vast sale will prove remunerative," and this "vast sale" he certainly effected in almost every instance. He published twelve separate issues of the Bible, and disposed of, probably, not less than 250,000 copies. The following is a list of his more important works: "History of the French Revolution," 20,000 copies at £4; "Hume's England," 5,000, at £4 18s.; "The Gazetteer," 4,000, at £4 10s.; "The Oxford Encyclopaedia," 4,000 at £6 (and the £24,000 only barely covered the original outlay); "The Geography," 30,000 at £4 4s.; and the "Architectural Works," 50,000, at an average of £1 13s. To these may be added "The Life of Christ," of which, in folio and quarto, not fewer than 100,000 copies were distributed, at prices varying from £1 1s. to £2. No wonder, with figures like these (for which we are indebted to Mr. Fell's volume), that the trade objected to this method of transacting business, but the difference was confined merely to business relations, for every one of the numerous booksellers in the Ward signed the request asking him to stand as Alderman.

In 1836 he received the highest honour to which a citizen of London can aspire, for he was elected Lord Mayor. His year of office was a memorable one, and the first entertainment of Queen Victoria occurred on the very day of his retirement from office, and thus he narrowly escaped the honour of a baronetcy, for he had the good sense to decline the requisition to stand a second time.

His appearance in his robes of office is thus described by M. Titus Perondi, a French traveller: "The new Lord Mayor appeared in a gilded chariot, almost