oming raiment.

There should be by right, and with advantage, as distinct an
intellectual spirit or element of thought in the binding as in the
writing and printing of a book. A man who traces on the covers and
back of a volume lines, curves, circles, crescents, scrolls, and
other figures without harmony and without significance--in other
words, without _mind_ or _esprit_--is no true artist, but either an
unskilful copyist or a rude beginner. Different schools naturally
adopted new ideas of the beautiful or the elegant; some of our most
ancient patterns were scriptural or mathematical; the age ruled the
prevailing taste and fashion, and everything in and out of Nature has
had its turn and its day. Then, again, nationality goes for something:
the Frenchman is fond of his _lis_ and the Scot of his thistle.

Artistic and historical book-covers have more than a special and
technical importance, inasmuch as they contribute to enrich a pursuit
which might otherwise become more limited in its interest than it is.
For gay or splendid bindings assist in bringing the Book, manuscript
or printed, within the category of antiquities or curiosities, where
it awakens sentiments in the breasts of persons, neither literary nor
bibliographical in their tastes, akin to those which they entertain
for a specimen of old furniture or old porcelain; and so indeed we see
entire libraries, which are little more than assemblages of triumphs
of the binder's art and agreeable memorials of prior ownership. A once
rather famous emporium in Piccadilly was known as the Temple of
Leather and Literature, because the extrinsic was supposed to govern;
and the same point is illustrated by the enormous difference in
pecuniary value between copies of many old works in morocco and in
more humble garb. Here Dress makes the book no less than in the song
it is said to make the man. So it was with the three independent
libraries of _Mesdames de France_, daughters of Louis XV. Each of
these ladies had her favourite hue in morocco, with the royal arms on
the sides; for Madame Adelaide it was red, for Madame Sophie, citron,
and for Madame Victoire, green or olive. The ornamental details of
early bindings, especially those of Continental origin, embrace nearly
every section of natural history: beasts, birds, fishes, insects,
flowers, and fruit, and endless varieties of geometrical lines and
curves. A Spanish New Testament, printed at Venice in 1556, even
presented o