ch his
'find' has passed; he loves to imagine that it may have been held
between the fingers of some person or persons of distinction; he is in
the seventh heaven of exaltation if he can be quite certain it has had
that honour. But suppose this factitious charm is really wanting?
Suppose a volume is dirty, and ignobly so? Must one necessarily delight
in dogs' ears, bask in the shadow of beer-stains, and 'chortle' at the
sign of cheese-marks? Surely it is one of the merits of new leaves that
they come direct from the printer and the binder, though they, alas!
may have left occasional impressions of an inky thumb.

It might possibly be argued that a new volume is, if anything, 'too
bright and good'--too beautiful and too resplendent--for 'base uses.'
There is undoubtedly an _amari aliquid_ about them. They certainly do
seem to say that we 'may look but must not touch.' Talk about the awe
with which your book-hunter gazes upon an ancient or infrequent tome;
what is it when compared with the respect which another class of
book-lover feels for a volume which reaches them 'clothed upon with'
virtual spotlessness? Who can have the heart to impair that innocent
freshness? Do but handle the book, and the harm is done--unless, indeed,
the handling be achieved with hands delicately gloved. The touch of the
finger is, in too many cases, fatal. On the smooth cloth or the vellum
or the parchment, some mark, alas! must needs be made. The lover of new
books will hasten, oftentimes, to enshrine them in paper covers; but a
book in such a guise is, for many, scarcely a book at all; it has lost
a great deal of its charm. Better, almost, the inevitable tarnishing.
All that's bright must fade; the new book cannot long maintain its
lustre. But it has had it, to begin with. And that is much. We feel at
least the first fine careless rapture. Whatever happens, no one can
deprive us of that--of the first fond glimpse of the immaculate.

But the matter is not, of course, one of exterior only. Some interest,
at least, attaches to the contents, however dull the subject, however
obscure the author. A new book is a new birth, not only to the aesthetic
but to the literary sense. It contains within it boundless
possibilities. There are printed volumes which are books only in
form--which are mere collections of facts or figures, or what not, and
which do not count. But if a volume be a genuine specimen of the _belles
lettres_, the imagination loves to p