ious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as
perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at
Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable
Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but
the salient feature was--in fact, the ruling one, with one
exception--that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of
ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors
were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out
a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and
ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably
yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.

The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely
indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of
Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and
beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot
do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr.
Quaritch's _Catalogue of Bindings_, 1888, which includes particulars
of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and
one of Zaehnsdorf's _Short History of Bookbinding_, 1895, with
illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in
the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced
monographs upon it.

In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort
to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for
collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their
books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of
the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in
the direction of independence, and its _Transactions_ form an
interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its
library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of
bindings.

The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type,
the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and
feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is
no present approach to what may be termed the _ensemble_ of a volume
placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks
of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may
not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owner