arbier,
"wants a portable library of a thousand volumes in 12mo., printed in
good type without margin, and composed as nearly as possible of forty
volumes on religion, forty of epics, forty of plays, sixty of poetry, a
hundred of novels, sixty of history, the remainder, to make up the
thousand, of historical memoirs. The religious works are to be the Old
and New Testament, the Koran, a selection of the works of the Fathers of
the Church, works respecting the Aryans, Calvinists, of Mythology, &c.
The epics are to be Homer, Lucan, Tasso, Telemachus, The Henriade, &c."
Machiavelli, Fielding, Richardson, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Corneille,
Racine, and Rousseau were also among the authors mentioned.'

_Bookbinding._

As far as I am aware there are only four bookbinders in London who may
be trusted not to mutilate a book, and there are only two who have any
sense of design and harmony of colour. In sending a book to be bound,
if you value the book, you cannot be too careful or minute in giving
instructions as to your wishes.

I think the best way to assist by advice is to picture a number of
everyday instances of people requiring books to be bound, and to take
such familiar cases instancing well-known books and show how each case
can best be dealt with.

First of all, the right leather to use for binding is morocco. This is
best; more durable, and a better choice of colour is given you.
Half-morocco is good, but see that you get a good wide strip of morocco,
and that it is not all cloth sides with a very narrow spine of leather.
Valuable books should never be cut down. In many cases the top edges may
be gilded which is a preservative from dust, but there are many other
cases where instructions should be given to 'gild on the rough,' the
three other sides should be left alone.

I will first take the case of the 'Cambridge' _Shakespeare_, the
hand-made paper edition, already spoken of, where each play has been
issued in a separate volume, and in all forty thin volumes. Now the
first question to settle is: Shall I have each of the forty volumes
bound separately, or shall I bind the forty in twenty double volumes? or
another question may arise in your mind, Shall I keep the book in its
neat linen cover as published, and get another small paper copy, and
bind that instead? Such questions must be settled--each one for himself.
All I will say now is that the large paper forty volume edition when
bound in twenty double vo