ficient only that a volume should be bound. It should be bound so
that it can be opened and perused with comfort. It should not be in too
stiff a cover, or it will be awkward to hold. And the cover should not
be in white or in too delicate a colour, or one will not care to handle
it. Nor should a book be bound too limply, for the cover will soon begin
to look shapeless. A parchment binding is charming to gaze at for a
time, but how quickly its glory fades! I should say to the ordinary
bookbuyer, in metaphoric language, Avoid the kickshaws and stick to the
solids! In other words, leave the delicacies to the connoisseur, and
give your attention to the books so clothed that you can read and keep
them as you will.

THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE.

I make no allusion here to the heroine of Mr. Haggard's well-known
romance. What I am thinking of at the moment is not the impossible 'She'
of recent fiction, but the 'not impossible She' of Master Richard
Crashaw--the 'perfect monster,' in female form, who was to 'command his
heart and him,' and whom he was good enough to sketch for us in advance
within the limits of some forty verses--the damsel whose beauty was to

'Owe not all its duty
To gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye;'

whose face was to be

'Made up
Out of no other shop
Than what Nature's white hand sets ope;'

who was to have 'a well-tamed heart,'

'Sidneian showers
Of sweet discourse,'

and so on, and of whom the poet was so kind as to say that, if Time knew
of anyone who answered the description,

'Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see--
I seek no further--it is She.'

Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been
seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this
subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone
had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been
scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of
an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more
numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to
actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men
of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But
the ideal description has generally come first, and very notable it has
usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that

'A face that should content me wondrous well
Sh