Grolier, the famous tooled
masterpieces of Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup, Trautz and other French
artists, and the beautiful gems of the binder's art from the hands of
Roger Payne, Lewis, Mackenzie, Hayday and Bedford, are they not
celebrated in the pages of Dibdin, Lacroix, Fournier, Wheatley, and
Robert Hoe?

There are some professed lovers of books who affect either indifference
or contempt for the style in which their favorites are dressed. A well
known epigram of Burns is sometimes quoted against the fondness for fine
bindings which widely prevails in the present day, as it did in that of
the Scottish Poet. A certain Scottish nobleman, endowed with more wealth
than brains, was vain of his splendidly bound Shakespeare, which,
however, he never read. Burns, on opening the folio, found the leaves
sadly worm-eaten, and wrote these lines on the fly-leaf:

"Through and through th' inspired leaves,
Ye maggots make your windings;
But O respect his lordship's taste,
And spare the golden bindings!"

Yet no real book-lover fails to appreciate the neatness and beauty of a
tasteful binding, any more than he is indifferent to the same qualities
in literary style. Slovenly binding is almost as offensive to a
cultivated eye as slovenly composition. No doubt both are "mere
externals," as we are told, and so are the splendors of scenery, the
beauty of flowers, and the comeliness of the human form, or features, or
costume. Talk as men will of the insignificance of dress, it constitutes
a large share of the attractiveness of the world in which we live.

The two prime requisites of good binding for libraries are neatness and
solidity. It is pleasant to note the steady improvement in American
bindings of late years. As the old style of "Half cloth boards," of half
a century ago, with paper titles pasted on the backs, has given way to
the neat, embossed, full muslin gilt, so the clumsy and homely sheep-skin
binding has been supplanted by the half-roan or morocco, with marble or
muslin sides. Few books are issued, however, either here or abroad, in
what may be called permanent bindings. The cheapness demanded by buyers
of popular books forbids this, while it leaves to the taste and fancy of
every one the selection of the "library style" in which he will have his
collection permanently dressed.

What is the best style of binding for a select or a public library? is a
question often discussed, with wide discre