l worth, in a
sumptuous morocco garb, bestowed on it by the author as a compliment
to his sovereign, or by the sovereign as an oblation to his mistress.
In those princely establishments for which such things were destined
and reserved, it was necessary that all the constituent features
should correspond in external grandeur, the costumes of the great
folks themselves, the furniture, the decorations, the equipages, the
dependents, the book-bindings.

The remarkable changes of taste in books cannot be more powerfully and
decisively exemplified than by the thousands of volumes which have
descended to us in all languages and many branches of literature in
liveries once only a subsidiary feature in the eyes of the possessors
or acquirers, and at present often the sole title to regard and the
sole object of competition. The work has become mere printed paper;
but it is perhaps not less covetable as a triumph of bibliopegistic
art, than as a memorial of the distinguished or interesting personages
through whose hands it has passed to our own. The book, alas! has
degenerated into a vehicle for external accessories. We are asked to
admire, not the quality of the text or the style of the writer, but
the beauty of the type, the splendour of the ink, and the elegance of
the initial letters, on the one hand; on the other, the excellence of
the leather, the brilliance of the gilding, the ingenuity and skill of
the design, and the curiosity of the _ex libris_. But this has to be
kept well in mind. It is the binding which constitutes the supreme
feature of importance and attraction. A second copy in shabby attire
may plead in vain its merits of production; but it fares as ill as a
person of the highest respectability who labours under the misfortune
of being badly dressed.

There is no point of distinction on the part of our own countrymen
more marked and enduring than the very qualified allegiance which they
give to the Parisian book-binding code. It is true enough that in
England we admire not merely the old French School, but the modern
one; but our loyalty and liking are by no means unreserved. A
Frenchman, in nine cases out of ten, will not, in the first place, buy
any book that was born out of France, any more than he will buy an
article of furniture or china, or a coin, emanating from a less
favoured soil; nor will he willingly acquire even a volume of native
origin in any state but the orthodox morocco; but his first impulse