rare, and therefore prized. The inconvenience of uncut copies is,
that one cannot easily turn over the leaves. But, in the present
state of the fashion, a really rare uncut Elzevir may be worth
hundreds of pounds, while a cropped example scarcely fetches as many
shillings. A set of Shakespeare's quartoes, uncut, would be worth
more than a respectable landed estate in Connemara. For these
reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound
"uncut." It is always easy to have the leaves pared away; but not
even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which Hera yearly renewed her
maidenhood, could restore margins once clipped away. So much for
books which are chiefly precious for the quantity and quality of the
material on which they are printed. Even this rather foolish
weakness of the amateur would not be useless if it made our
publishers more careful to employ a sound clean hand-made paper,
instead of drugged trash, for their more valuable new productions.
Indeed, a taste for hand-made paper is coming in, and is part of the
revolt against the passion for everything machine-made, which ruined
art and handiwork in the years between 1840 and 1870.

The third of M. Brunet's categories of books of prose, includes
livres de luxe, and illustrated literature. Every Christmas brings
us livres de luxe in plenty, books which are no books, but have gilt
and magenta covers, and great staring illustrations. These are
regarded as drawing-room ornaments by people who never read. It is
scarcely necessary to warn the collector against these gaudy baits
of unregulated Christmas generosity. All ages have not produced
quite such garish livres de luxe as ours. But, on the whole, a book
brought out merely for the sake of display, is generally a book ill
"got up," and not worth reading. Moreover, it is generally a folio,
or quarto, so large that he who tries to read it must support it on