The work was absolutely essential for all merchants and other business people, and for government workers in the treasury department — for milled coins were the exception in Mexican commerce, cob pieces the norm, and raw gold and silver, including dust, were extremely common.

The volume ends with the “Reglas varias, para sacar juntos, o separados en pasta, o en moneda los reales derechos, que se pagan a S. Mag. De el oro y de la plata, y para reducir a toda su ley estos metales.”

An uncommon economic work: We trace fewer than nine copies in the U.S.

This was printed by Doña Maria de Rivera with a red and black title-page, and with woodcut arms on first dedication page. The charming cut of a herald cherub appears after the decima dedicated to the author at the end of the preliminaries.

•  Medina, Mexico, 4073.   Contemporary full Mexican calf, modestly tooled in gilt and with all edges red; recased, new endpapers. Final two leaves little ragged at edges costing a few letters and with small hole at center and short tears at inner margin; old staining and age-toning/browning throughout. There is every indication that this well-produced little volume saw time “in the field”!  (26850)

Click the image for an enlargement.

An interesting and uncommon entry in the corpus of the Scottish Enlightenment and one with an American connection — as among the “modern Calvinist “ writers approvingly cited is “the Reverend Mr Jonathan Edwards minister of Stockbridge in New England.”

WorldCat and ESTC combine to locate fewer than 10 copies in U.S. libraries.

•  ESTC T54876.   Removed from a nonce volume; laid into modern wrappers. A few instances of faint spotting, pages almost entirely clean.  (27638)

•  19th-century yellow-green paper over cardboard with red paper spine labels lettered in black; abraded with some tears, especially to paper over spine. Interior clean, and all edges red.

•  ESTC N5425; Garrison-Morton 2199 (for first ed.). Contemporary speckled calf, spine with gilt-stamped title and compartment decorations; leather cracked and chipped on spine and joints, with minor rubbing to sides and edges. Front free endpaper with private collector’s rubber-stamp and inked name, front pastedown with small inked numeral. One front and one back fly-leaf excised. One leaf with short tear from outer margin just touching one letter; one leaf with paper flaw affecting a few letters without loss of legibility. Pages clean save for some age-toning and scattered iinstances of light staining to outer margins.

•  Brunet, I, 1122. Contemporary vellum, spine with inked title; spine and edges mildly dust-soiled. All edges speckled red and blue. Front pastedown with institutional rubber-stamp; front pastedown torn and back pastedown lifted away from cover. Pages clean.

The title-page here is in black and red, opposite a fine frontispiece of Christ seated, surrounded by adults and children and the quotation from Matthew 19:14 (i.e., “Sinite parvulos et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire talium est enim regnum caelorum,” or in English, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven”). The engraving is by Juan Antonio Salvador after Maella.

Preceding the frontispiece is a leaf of publisher's advertising for other works by Bossuet and translations by Fernandez. Such advertising leaves in Spanish books of this era are very uncommon in our 30 years of experience.

Searches of NUC Pre-1956 and WorldCat locate no copies of this edition in U.S. libraries. Searches of COPAC found no Spanish-language 18th-century editions. Searches of the Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico gave the best results, with 15 copies of this first edition found in libraries across Spain.

•  Palau 33620.   Contemporary vellum over light boards; button and loop closures (broken). Inconsistent browning varying from gathering to gathering, having to do with impurities in water used in paper manufacture and subsequent exposure to humidity. Light waterstain to foremargin of the frontispiece and slightly into the image. Withal, a rather good copy of a book that is difficult to find in today's market.  (29824)