and novels in particular had been very largely diffused by clubs,
"institutions," and other forms of co-operative individual enterprise,
the bookplates of which will be found in many a copy of an old novel
now. Sometimes these were purely private associations of neighbours:
sometimes they belonged to more or less extensive establishments, like
that defunct "Russell Institution in Great Coram Street," which a great
author, who was its neighbour, once took for an example of desolation;
or the still existing and flourishing "Philosophical" examples in
Edinburgh and Bath. In these latter cases, of course, novels were not
allowed to be the main constituents of the library; in fact in some, but
few, they may have been sternly excluded. On the other hand, the
private-adventure circulating libraries tended more and more, with few
exceptions, to rely on novels only--"Mudie's" and a few more being
exceptions. Very few people, I suppose, ever bought three-volume novels;
and the fact that they went almost wholly to the libraries, and were
there worn to pieces, accounts for the comparative rarity of good
copies. The circulating library has survived both the decease of the
three-volume novel and the competition of the so-called free library.
But it is pretty certain that it was a chief cause--and almost the whole
_sustaining_ cause--of the three-volume system itself. Nor was the
connection between nature of form and system of distribution limited to
England: for the single-volume novel, though older in France than with
us, is not so very old.

But a very considerable proportion of these famous books made
appearances previous to that in three volumes, and not distantly
connected with their popularity. For the most part these previous
appearances were either in magazines or periodicals of one kind and
another, or else in "parts."