gilding and
with a lettering, probably abbreviated and obscure, on the back. Very
sumptuous examples alike of calf and turkey leather binding
frequently present themselves, either executed for ordinary persons,
or without any note of the original owner; many are more or less
successful copies of Continental models, such as the Lyonnese calf,
the Grolier and Maioli pattern; but in general our ancestors seem to
have been satisfied with the paned sides and floriate back, unless
heraldic accessories intervened to usurp the space occupied by the
lateral ornament or (as in some of John Evelyn's or his sovereign's
books) a gilt ornamental cypher formed the dorsal embellishment.

A visit to some old church or parish, or even cathedral, library
nowadays may afford a notion of the external aspect of the early
book-closet of the English student or amateur. The glass case is
conspicuously absent; the shelf on which the volumes are ranged has to
our eyes a ragged, slatternly look; and nothing can well be more
opposite to modern taste. Yet the feeling for the printed matter
between the two covers or behind the paper label was more genuine, may
be, and more practical when a handful of volumes, reflecting the
personal predilections or requirements of the owner, gradually
accumulated, and the acquisition did not amount to a pursuit, much
less to a passion and a competitive race.

The professional binding of books in our country, whether they had
been actually produced here or had been purchased abroad, was at the
outset almost exclusively executed by printers, who must have had a
special department to carry out this branch of work. We hear of the
site of Dean Colet's original school having been a bookbinder's, and
of the teaching establishment occupying the upper part of the
building. The usual style of binding appears to have been the covering
of stamped leather, of which such a rich store of examples still
survives, and which was copied from the German and Low-Country models.
For weightier books oaken boards frequently served as a foundation, on
which the leather was laid. Our sovereigns and nobility employed
Pynson, Berthelet, Raynes, and other typographers to clothe the
volumes which formed their libraries, before the more luxurious and
splendid fashion was introduced of investing them in richly gilt calf
bindings, with or without armorial cognisances, and these were again
superseded by the adoption of the Continental taste for L