respectable journeyman's work and nothing
more. The men of the Renascence had a
truer sense of adaptation; the age of jewelled
bindings was also the age of illumination and
of the beautiful miniatura, which at an earlier
stage meant side or margin art,[3] and then, on
account of the small portraitures included in
it, gradually slid into the modern sense of
miniature. There is a caution which we ought
to carry with us more and more as we get in
view of the coming period of open book trade,
and of demand practically boundless. Noble
works ought not to be printed in mean and
worthless forms, and cheapness ought to be
limited by an instinctive sense and law of
fitness. The binding of a book is the dress
with which it walks out into the world. The
paper, type and ink are the body, in which its
soul is domiciled. And these three, soul, body,
and habilament, are a triad which ought to be
adjusted to one another by the laws of harmony
and good sense.

Already the increase of books is passing into
geometrical progression. And this is not a
little remarkable when we bear in mind that
in Great Britain, of which I speak, while there
is a vast supply of cheap works, what are
termed "new publications" issue from the
press, for the most part, at prices fabulously