ure the adhesion of the gold leaf. The thin gold leaf (which comes
packed in little square "books," one sheet between every two leaves) is
then cut the proper size by the broad thin knife of the "finisher," and
carefully laid over the sized spot to receive the lettering. Usually, two
thicknesses of gold leaf are laid one above another, which ensures a
brighter and more decided effect in the lettering. The type metal or die
is then pressed firmly and evenly down upon the gold-leaf, and the
surplus shavings of the gold carefully brushed off and husbanded, for
this leaf is worth money. The gold leaf generally in use costs about
$6.50 for 500 little squares or sheets. It is almost inconceivably thin,
the thickness of one gold leaf being estimated at about 1/280000 of an
inch.

Besides the lettering, many books receive gold ornamentation on the back
or side of a more or less elaborate character. Designs of great artistic
beauty, and in countless variety, have been devised for book ornaments,
and French and English book-binders have vied with each other for
generations in the production of decorative borders, fillets,
centre-pieces, rolls, and the most exquisite gold-tooling, of which the
art is capable.

These varied patterns of book ornamentation are cut in brass or steel,
and applied by the embossing press with a rapidity far exceeding that of
the hand-work formerly executed by the gilders of books. But for choice
books and select jobs, only the hands are employed, with such fillets,
stamps, pallets, rolls, and polishing irons as may aid in the nice
execution of the work. If a book is to be bound in what is called
"morocco antique," it is to be "blind-tooled," _i. e._: the hot iron
wheels which impress the fillets or rolls, are to be worked in blank, or
without gold-leaf ornamentation. This is a rich and tasteful binding,
especially with carefully beveled boards, and gilded edges.

On some books, money has been lavished on the binding to an amount
exceeding by many fold the cost of the book itself. Elegant book-binding
has come to be reckoned as a fine art, and why should not "the art
preservative of all other arts"--printing--be preserved in permanent and
sumptuous, if not splendid style, in its environment? Specimens of French
artistic binding from the library of Grolier, that celebrated and
munificent patron of art, who died in 1565, have passed through the hands
of many eager connoisseurs, always at advancing prices.