he stable by the intelligent and highly-educated
proprietors, while others have fallen a prey to gas and dust in town.
These sources of injury and natural ruin no material can of course
long resist; and, the foreigner often enjoying the advantage of a less
impure atmosphere, and not usually aiming at a larger collection than
may be necessary as chamber-furniture, his acquisitions are apt to
come down to us in a more contemporary state, although we grant that,
where certain postulates have been fulfilled, we have shown our
capability of presenting to a distant age an assemblage of the ancient
literature of our own and other countries as immaculate as when it
changed hands over the counter in Tudor or in Stuart times.

Binding and Bibliography, no less than literature, are in opposite
lobbies as regards the character of the objects which one sees
submitted to periodical competition. The taste in books has undergone
revolutionary changes; the volumes on which early owners lavished
extravagant sums have too often become _per se_ waste paper; and it
consequently happens that a catalogue devoted to an account of such
relics of the past has to register titles and names which play a
subordinate part in the matter, and are, as it were, merely useful as
a means of identification.

While a large number of splendid examples of binding in russia and
morocco have been produced in Great Britain, there has scarcely been
at any time a school of binding analogous to those which France, and
even Italy, have known, each with its distinctive and recognisable
characteristics; nor have we attained in the liveries of our books to
the same splendour and beauty of decoration, or to an equal degree of
historical or personal interest.

A large number of fine examples present themselves in our sale-rooms
here, formerly ornaments of some of the noble collections formed in
different parts of Germany; too often they show traces of neglect, yet
occasionally they have preserved their pristine beauty and freshness
almost unimpaired. They are, for the most part, of the very favourite
class, where the oaken boards constitute a receptacle or foundation
for an encasement of leather (frequently pigskin) stamped with some
beautiful historiette on either side, and carrying the date and other
particulars of origin and ownership. We meet with numerous specimens
from time to time of the libraries of the Electors of Saxony and
Bavaria in this picturesque and bec