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.