them to their heart's desire with quaint and dainty devices on the
morocco covers. Books are lifelong friends in that country; in
England they are the guests of a week or of a fortnight. The
greatest French writers have been collectors of curious editions;
they have devoted whole treatises to the love of books. The
literature and history of France are full of anecdotes of the good
and bad fortunes of bibliophiles, of their bargains, discoveries,
disappointments. There lies before us at this moment a small
library of books about books,--the 'Bibliophile Francais,' in seven
large volumes, 'Les Sonnets d'un Bibliophile,' 'La Bibliomanie en
1878,' 'La Bibliotheque d'un Bibliophile' (1885) and a dozen other
works of Janin, Nodier, Beraldi, Pieters, Didot, great collectors
who have written for the instruction of beginners and the pleasure
of every one who takes delight in printed paper.

The passion for books, like other forms of desire, has its changes
of fashion. It is not always easy to justify the caprices of taste.
The presence or absence of half an inch of paper in the "uncut"
margin of a book makes a difference of value that ranges from five
shillings to a hundred pounds. Some books are run after because
they are beautifully bound; some are competed for with equal
eagerness because they never have been bound at all. The
uninitiated often make absurd mistakes about these distinctions.
Some time ago the Daily Telegraph reproached a collector because his
books were "uncut," whence, argued the journalist, it was clear that
he had never read them. "Uncut," of course, only means that the
margins have not been curtailed by the binders' plough. It is a
point of sentiment to like books just as they left the hands of the
old printers,--of Estienne, Aldus, or Louis Elzevir.