at it will demand a small
fortune to effect a perfect reunion.

It is hazardous to discount the durability and permanence of our best
modern bindings of English origin, and to answer our own question,
whether hereafter they will be appreciated in the same way as those of
the old masters here and abroad. Yet we think that we can offer a
valid and persuasive reason why we shall fall short of former ages in
this handicraft. The feudal conditions and atmosphere, which go far to
win our regard or arrest our attention in the case of the older
binders and their work, have vanished, and can never revive. It is
with the book from this point of view as it is from that of the
autograph inscription or signature; both are extensions of the owner's
personality; and what a personality it was! Those who follow us at a
distance may find reason to think and speak differently; but we can
at the present moment scarcely realise the possibility of our
latter-day literature acquiring a pedigree and an incrusted fragrance
such as belong to works, however dull and worthless in themselves,
from the libraries of Grolier, Maioli, De Thou, Peiresc, or Pompadour.
There is a sort of sensation of awe in taking up these volumes, as if
they had passed through some holy ordeal, as if they had been
canonised. It is not the piece of dressed leather with its decorative
adjuncts which casts its spell over us: it is the reputation of the
courtly patron of learning and art; of the statesman and soldier who
sought a diversion in the formation of a library from severer
employments; of the prince who loved to gather round him such
evidences of his taste, or to lay them at the feet of _a chere amie_;
of the licentious but superb Lady Marquise, who vied with her king in
the magnificence of her books, as she did with his consort in that of
her toilette--it is this which exercises upon our imagination its
ridiculous yet unalterable sway.

It is impossible to avoid the discovery, if we take for the first time
a survey of a library chiefly conspicuous for the splendour of its
bindings, how almost invariably we are disappointed by the contrast
between the exterior and the contents. It would probably be far from
easy to fill a small case with examples where a really valuable book
was enshrined in a covering of corresponding character. It is our
ordinary experience to meet with some obsolete nondescript classic, or
some defunct theological treatise of alike infinitesima