has graduated to lay his prentice fingers on a tome in
the pristine _mutton_, or to endanger the maidenhood of a Clovis Eve,
a Padeloup, or a Derome, which you must handle as if it were the
choicest and daintiest proof medal or etching. Why, one has to bear in
mind that he is not dealing with a mere ordinary source of
intellectual gratification and improvement, but with a mechanical
product perfect in all its parts. Let him come gloved, and his friend
the owner will bless him.

Between a book bound in its original cloth or paper boards, and one in
its rich vesture of morocco or russia, there is a contrast similar to
that between a woodland and a park. In the one case, at a distance,
perhaps, of fifty or even a hundred years from the period of
publication, we hold in our hand a volume precisely in the state in
which it passed from that of the contemporary salesman to the
contemporary buyer; and not a stain nor a finger-mark save the
mellowing touch of time is upon it anywhere. Let us look at the
description in a sale catalogue of such a rarity as Lamb's _Poetry for
Children_, 1807, "in the original grey boards, with red labels," or a
copy of the first edition of Fielding's _Tom Jones_, absolutely uncut,
and in the bookseller's pristine covers, or, better still, of the
first part of the first edition of Spenser's _Faery Queen_, 1590, in
the Elizabethan wrapper! It is not the mere circumstance, let it be
understood, of untrimmed edges which makes the charm; many a book or
pamphlet occurs as innocent of the binder's knife as the lamb unborn,
and highly desirable it is too; but to render an example of this class
complete, its authentic outward integument in blameless preservation
is as essential to its repute and its marketable worth as the presence
of the claws is held to be in the original valuation of a fur of fox
or beaver.

No educated eye can regard with indifference a more or less
interesting volume clothed in a becoming livery by an accomplished
artist either of other times or of these. If it is an ancient vesture,
with the credentials in the form of a coat of arms, an _ex libris_, or
a signature, or all of these, handed down with it to us, we appear to
be able to disregard time, and feel ourselves brought within touch of
the individual who owned it, of him who encased it in its lavishly
gilt leathern coat, and of the circle to which it was long a familiar
object, as it reposed unmolested in a corner of some _petit