I wish a world of books thine own.
Books rule thy mind, so let it be!
Thy heart is mine, and mine alone.


There is one method of preserving books, which, alas, only tempts
the borrower, the stealer, the rat, and the book-worm; but which is
absolutely necessary as a defence against dust and neglect. This is
binding. The bookbinder's art too often destroys books when the
artist is careless, but it is the only mode of preventing our
volumes from falling to pieces, and from being some day disregarded
as waste-paper. A well-bound book, especially a book from a famous
collection, has its price, even if its literary contents be of
trifling value. A leather coat fashioned by Derome, or Le Gascon,
or Duseuil, will win respect and careful handling for one specimen
of an edition whereof all the others have perished. Nothing is so
slatternly as the aspect of a book merely stitched, in the French
fashion, when the threads begin to stretch, and the paper covers to
curl and be torn. Worse consequences follow, whole sheets are lost,
the volume becomes worthless, and the owner must often be at the
expense of purchasing another copy, if he can, for the edition may
now be out of print. Thus binding of some sort not only adds a
grace to the library, presenting to the eye the cheerful gilded rows
of our volumes, but is a positive economy. In the case of our
cloth-covered English works, the need of binding is not so
immediately obvious. But our publishers have a taste for clothing
their editions in tender tones of colour, stamped, often, with
landscapes printed in gold, in white, or what not. Covers like
this, may or may not please the eye while they are new and clean,
but they soon become dirty and hideous. When a book is covered in