University of California Berkeley 
 
THE 
 
 ROMAN AND ITALIC 
 PRINTING TYPES 
 
 IN THE PRINTING HOUSE OF 
 
 THEODORE L. DE YINNE & CO 
 
 12 LAFAYETTE PLACE 
 
 NEW-YORK 
 THE DEVINNE PRESS 
 
 1891 
 
&ince foonour from tfoe fronourer procee&S, 
 $ott ttieH tio rfcej? tJes^rtie, t&at mcmori3e 
 2Cnb tetibc in boofes for aH posterities 
 (Cfre names of \uortbieS anb t&eir birtuouS OeetJS. 
 
 JOHN FLORIO. 1545-1625. 
 
OFFICE OF THE DE VINNE PRESS, 
 
 12 Lafayette Place, 
 NEW- YORK, September, 1891. 
 
 WE take pleasure in presenting to our customers a 
 complete Specimen Book of various sizes and faces 
 of types suitable for books, magazines, pamphlets, catalogues, 
 and circulars. An effort has been made to contrast the old 
 style and modern cuts of letter on opposing pages. To 
 facilitate a comparison of effects the sizes most frequently 
 used are shown in three forms solid, leaded, and double 
 leaded. Initials have been inserted to show how an other- 
 wise unattractive page may be brightened. 
 
 Of most of the sizes of types here displayed we have 
 large fonts. Many are new, and all are in good condition, 
 well fitted for the printing of fine book, pamphlet, and job 
 work. 
 
 Electrotyping and cloth binding are done in departments 
 of this establishment. 
 
 Head-bands and tail-pieces, and typographical book 
 decorations from the leading European founders, can be 
 supplied in great variety. 
 
 THEO. L. DE VINNE & Co. 
 
GENERAL INFORMATION. 
 
 NUMBER OF WORDS IN A SQUARE INCH. 
 
 IN calculating the number of pages a manu- 
 script will occupy, these figures may be used : 
 
 Words to 
 Square Inch. 
 
 Double small-pica, solid ... 4 
 
 Great-primer, solid .... 7 
 
 English, solid 1 1 
 
 Pica, solid 14 
 
 Pica, leaded n 
 
 Small-pica, solid 17 
 
 Small-pica, leaded .... \^ 
 
 Long-primer, solid . . . . 21 
 
 Long-primer, leaded ... 16 
 
 Bourgeois, solid 28 
 
 Bourgeois, leaded ... 21 
 
 Brevier, solid . . ... 32 
 
 Brevier, leaded . . 23 
 
 Minion, solid 38 
 
 Minion, leaded 27 
 
 Nonpareil, solid ..... 47 
 
 Nonpareil, leaded .... 34 
 
 Pearl, solid 69 
 
 Pearl, leaded 50 
 
 Thus, suppose the size of book called me- 
 dium octavo were selected for a manuscript 
 of 80,000 words. The type page should 
 measure about 3^4" x 6^ inches, or 25^ square 
 inches. If small-pica type, leaded, were 
 desired, the number of words in one page 
 would average 353, and the number of pages 
 in the book, exclusive of titles and other 
 front matter, would be about 227. By fol- 
 lowing the same rules, these 80,000 words 
 would make in long-primer 198 pages, in 
 brevier 138 pages, in nonpareil 93 pages. 
 These calculations are for close or compact 
 composition. There must be added a fair al- 
 lowance for chapter heads, blank pages, etc. 
 
 " Leaded," as here used, means a widening 
 of lines with six-to-pica leads. 
 
 MAKE-UP OF A BOOK. 
 
 The customary order in the make-up of a 
 book is : half-title and blank page, full title 
 and blank page or copyright notice, dedica- 
 tion and blank page, preface, list of contents, 
 list of illustrations, text, appendix, glossary, 
 index. When the certificate of a limited edi- 
 tion is used it should precede the half-title. 
 A sheet of errata may advantageously follow 
 the list of illustrations, though it often forms 
 the last leaf of the book. An advertisement 
 facing the title-page is not in good taste. 
 
 To prevent a frequent occasion for mis- 
 understanding, do not use leaf and page as 
 synonymous. A direction to make the words 
 in a piece of copy occupy eight leaves is an 
 authorization to put it on sixteen pages. The 
 word leaf can be properly given only to paper 
 never to print. A leaf has two sides: if 
 printed on one side only it has but one page 
 of print; if printed on both sides it has two 
 pages of print. The word page can be cor- 
 rectly given only to the print on one side of 
 a leaf. 
 
 RELATIVE SIZES OF TYPES. 
 
 BRUCE'S STANDARD. 
 
 A page that contains 1000 ems pica is 
 equivalent to a page containing: 
 
 Small-pica .... 1260 ems. * 
 Long-primer .... 1587 " 
 Bourgeois .... 2000 " 
 
 Brevier 2520 " 
 
 Minion 3175 " 
 
 Nonpareil 4000 " 
 
RELATIVE VALUES OF BINDINGS. 
 
 Paper, boards, cloth, skiver, roan, calfskin, 
 russia, turkey morocco, and levant morocco 
 increase in price in the order here given. 
 Parchment, vellum, and hogskin are excep- 
 tional bindings. 
 
 CUSTOMARY SIZES OF BOOKS. 
 
 Sizes of the Untrimmed 
 Leaf, in Inches. 
 
 . . 12 X 19 
 . . 9 l /2 X 12 
 
 8XxnK 
 
 . . . 7 X ii 
 . . 6^ x 10 
 
 5/8 X 7 2 A 
 4 1 / 2 X6% 
 
 4% X7 
 4X6^ 
 
 3*/2 X S l /2 
 
 Folio 
 
 Quarto 
 
 Imperial 8 .... 
 Super royal 8 ... 
 Royal 8 .... 
 Medium8 .... 
 
 Demy 8 
 
 Medium 12 ... 
 Medium 16 . 
 Cap 8 . . . 
 Medium 18. . . 
 Super royal 32 . . 
 
 Of these the medium 12 and medium 16 
 may be considered the most popular sizes. 
 When the book is trimmed, the measure- 
 ments given above will be slightly reduced. 
 Books can be made of intermediate sizes 
 and of different proportions ; but the sizes 
 here specified are regular and will be found 
 the most economical. Intermediate and 
 irregular shapes compel a waste of paper, 
 or the extra delay and extra cost of paper 
 made to order. 
 
 The margins of a page often consume 
 three fifths of the space upon it, leaving a 
 comparatively small portion to be occupied 
 by the type. 
 
 ABOUT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Untidy and illegible covy is always to 
 the author's disadvantage in unavoidable 
 delays, in extra charges for alterations, and 
 in the increased probability of vexatious 
 misprints which the utmost vigilance may 
 not discover. Typewritten copy, if on paper 
 not too thin, is the most satisfactory; but 
 when it is impracticable to furnish this, a 
 
 final draft should be made for the printer 
 in which all additions, interlineations, and 
 corrections are inserted in proper order. 
 Plain writing is always preferred: flourished 
 letters confuse and retard the compositor. 
 
 Authors can materially assist the printer 
 by furnishing with manuscript a rough draft 
 of the card or circular or pamphlet they have 
 in view, showing the dimensions of the print 
 and prominence to be given each portion of 
 the matter. 
 
 Punctuation may safely be left to the 
 proof-readers of a printing office. It is part 
 of their profession ; they make a study of 
 the subject, and are usually better qualified 
 for this work than the inexpert. 
 
 TITLE-PAGE AND PREFACE. 
 
 Copy for title-page and preface is com- 
 monly neglected by authors until the rest of 
 the book has been printed, and it not infre- 
 quently happens that the title-page is printed 
 on a separate leaf when it should form part 
 of a sheet or signature. This makes need- 
 less delay and expense. When possible, 
 furnish complete manuscript for each con- 
 secutive page of a publication. 
 
 THE EXPENSE OF PRINTING A BOOK. 
 
 This can be determined only by a special 
 estimate from a practical printer. Guesses 
 and comparisons with the cost of other pub- 
 lications are of little value. Submit if pos- 
 sible your complete copy and plans to the 
 printer to guide him in his calculations. 
 
 To prevent misunderstandings which occa- 
 sionally arise from ambiguous directions as 
 to size, it is recommended to those who are 
 seeking estimates that a piece of blank paper 
 be cut to the exact size of the leaf desired, on 
 which can be penciled the width and length 
 of the preferred page. This diagram will 
 give the printer more exact instruction than 
 that had from a specification in inches, or 
 from a reference to the size of a page in 
 another book. 
 
ROMAN AND ITALIC 
 FEINTING TYPES 
 
8 
 SIX-LINE PICA No. 20. SOLID. 
 
 IUM 
 
 sine 
 literis 
 Mors est, 
 et hominis 
 vivi sepul- 
 tura. 
 
 SENECA. 
 
9 
 SIX-LINE PICA No. 16. SOLID.* 
 
 HAT 
 
 friend 
 can be 
 more help- 
 ful than a 
 book that 
 ennobles? 
 
10 
 FIVE-LINE PICA OLD STYLE. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 EARN 
 
 to wait 
 for Time to 
 bring what 
 you desire. 
 It is Time 
 that ripens 
 the corn! 
 
1 1 
 
 FOUR-LINK PICA ROMAN. QUADRUPLK LKAI>KI>. 
 
 W 
 
 HENa 
 
 proud 
 man keeps 
 me at my 
 distance, it 
 is comfort- 
 ing to see 
 him keep 
 at his also. 
 
 SWIFT. 
 
12 
 
 FOUR-LINE PICA OLD STYLE. LEADED. 
 
 BEGAN to 
 
 think quite 
 
 soberly of matri- 
 mony, and chose 
 my Wife as she 
 did her wedding 
 gown -not for a 
 fine, glossy sur- 
 face, but for such 
 qualities as wear. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
13 
 FOUR-LINE PICA No. 16. TRIPLE LEADED. 
 
 HEY well 
 
 may fear 
 fate who have 
 any infirmity 
 of purpose or 
 aim; But the 
 man that rests 
 on what he is 
 has a destiny. 
 
DOUBLE PARAGON OLD STYLE. LEADED. 
 
 OU dwell, 
 said he, in 
 the City of 
 Destruction, in the 
 place also where I 
 was born: I see it 
 to be thus; and dy- 
 ing there, sooner 
 or later, you will 
 sink into the place 
 that burns with fire 
 and brimstone 
 
15 
 FOUR-LINE PICA No. 164. SOLID.* 
 
 OR the other 
 employments 
 of life do not suit 
 all times, ages, or 
 places ; but lit- 
 erary studies em- 
 ploy the thoughts 
 of the young, and 
 are the delight of 
 the old, 
 
 CICERO. 
 
i6 
 DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER OLD STYLE. LEADED. 
 
 HIS ultra mer- 
 cantile animus 
 which controls 
 all the designs of pub- 
 lishers for the better 
 pleasing of the light 
 and capricious taste of 
 the people is not fa- 
 vorable for fine print- 
 ing. Limitations as to 
 time and expense in- 
 evitably decrease the 
 artistic worth of the 
 printer's work. 
 
 CRAPELET. 
 
DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER No. 16. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 ORK, that's the 
 great thing 
 the man who 
 works is religious; he 
 adds something to the 
 world to make it bet- 
 ter, richer, more com- 
 plete; it is capital of 
 which the interest will 
 go on increasing incal- 
 culably. What I call 
 " work" is a man giving 
 his soul entirely to it. 
 
 STORY. 
 
i8 
 DOUBLE GRKAT PRIMER No. 13. LEADED.* 
 
 UlDlS(the Ital- 
 ian poet) end is 
 stated to have been 
 hastened by the mis- 
 prints in his poetical 
 paraphrase npon the 
 Homilies of his pa- 
 tron, Clement Xlth. 
 Bnt compositors by 
 scores are annually 
 worried into early 
 graves by trying to 
 decipher wretched- 
 ly poor manuscript. 
 
DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER LIGHT FACE. LEADED. 
 
 lURING the nine- 
 teenth centnry 
 bookbinding has been 
 making rapid strides, 
 not only as a manu- 
 facture, which is evi- 
 dent in a marvelons 
 degree, bnt also in the 
 beantifying of many 
 thousands of private 
 libraries with choice 
 specimens of beanti- 
 fnl bindings and or- 
 nate finishing. 
 
 WILLIAM MATTHEWS. 
 
2O 
 DOUBLE ENGLISH OLD STYLE. SOLID. 
 
 DO not know a more 
 heartless sight than a 
 recent reprint of the 
 "Anatomy of Melancholy." 
 What need was there of un- 
 earthing the bones of that 
 fantastic old man, to expose 
 them in a winding-sheet of 
 the newest fashion to mod- 
 ern censure? What hapless 
 stationer could dream of 
 Burton becoming popular? 
 The wretched Malone could 
 not do any worse when he 
 bribed the sexton of Strat- 
 ford church to let him white- 
 wash the painted effigy of 
 old Shakspere. 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
21 
 
 DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER ORNAMENTED No. 1526. LEADED. 
 
 of fed- 
 fof tl\ee 
 
 tl\ou 
 
 of 
 
 old fellow^ it\ tl^eif 
 
 will extend 
 tl\ee exdeller^t divefti^e- 
 
 to tl\y took^ ; tl^ey pf 
 er^tly l\old tl\ee to tl\en\, 
 divert 
 
 ir\ii|d. 
 
 DR. THOMAS FULLER. 
 
22 
 DOUBLE ENGLISH No. 13. LEADED. 
 
 H 
 
 HERE is a fashion 
 in reading as well 
 as in dress, which 
 lasts only for the season. 
 One would imagine that 
 books were, like women, 
 the worse for being old; 
 that they have a pleas- 
 ure in being read for the 
 first time ; that they open 
 their leaves more cor- 
 dially; that the spirit of 
 enjoyment wears out with 
 the spirit of novelty ; and 
 that, after a certain age, 
 it is high time to put them 
 on the shelf. 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
23 
 DOUBLE ENGLISH LIGHT FACE. SOLID. 
 
 LONZO of Arra- 
 gon was wont to 
 say, in comment- 
 ing on age, that 
 age appeared to be best 
 in fonr things : old wood 
 best to burn, old wine. to 
 drink, old Mends to trust, 
 and old authors to read. 
 And the wise man of the 
 Persians once said, when 
 asked by what means he 
 had attained to so high 
 a degree of knowledge : 
 "What I did not know, 
 I was not ashamed to in- 
 quire about, I inquire 
 about everything!" 
 
24 
 DOUBLE PICA OLD STYLE. SOLID. 
 
 O man can comfort- 
 ably get along with- 
 out three copies of 
 each book. One he 
 should have for a 
 show copy, which he will probably 
 keep at his country house; another 
 he will require for his own use and 
 reference; and unless he is inclined 
 to part with this, which would be 
 very inconvenient, or risk the injury 
 of his best copy, he must have a 
 third at the service of his friends. 
 
 The great point of view in a 
 collector is to possess that not pos- 
 sessed by any other. It is said of 
 a collector lately deceased, that he 
 used to purchase scarce prints at 
 enormous prices in order to destroy 
 them, and thereby render the re- 
 maining impressions more valuable. 
 
 HEBER. 
 
25 
 DOUBLE PICA ORNAMENTED No. 1526. LEADED/ 
 
 vklukble 
 kqd otl^ef wtfit- 
 kfe i: ecil. It 
 
 beei\ di$6oYefed tl\kt tl\e 
 
 will fendef lekd- 
 
 delible k^ tl\ou^l\ doi|e witl\ 
 L(ky tl\e writii\^ ii) k 
 kqd ponf ^kin|n\ed iqilk upoi\ it. 
 Sny ^pot^ i\ot wet kt fif^t ir^ky 
 l^kre tl\e ir^ilk plkded upori tl\eii| 
 li^tly with k fekHef. Tkke up 
 tl^e pkpef, let tl\e milk dfkii| off, 
 kqd wipe kwky witl\ tl\e fektl\ef 
 tl\e dfop^ wl^i6l\ ^olledt upoi| tl\e 
 lowef ed^e. f)fy it dkfefully, 
 
 A^ill be fouled to 
 indelible. It 6ki|i|ot be 
 witl\ 
 
26 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA OLD STYLE No. 15. LEADED. 
 
 HAT a wonderful race the 
 Americans have become ! 
 Every man has his news- 
 paper. See that drayman 
 there, sitting on his truck eagerly read- 
 ing his newspaper; and that hackman, 
 mounted on his perch, with his whip 
 on his knee, diving into his newspaper; 
 and yonder that laborer, stopping on 
 the corner to buy his newspaper; and 
 see that paver, repairing the street, with 
 a newspaper sticking out of his pocket, 
 where he has placed it for further read- 
 ing when he has leisure. So it may 
 be seen in every American town or city, 
 in the booming mining settlements of 
 the far West as well as the humming 
 cities of the East. There is nothing 
 like it in Europe. No other people, 
 through all its ranks, is so well versed 
 in the current information of the coun- 
 try and the WOrld. GERMAN RF.KORM MESSENGER. 
 
27 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA No. 20. LEADED. 
 
 HERE it was that one 
 first came upon those 
 pretty little books, the 
 Elzevir classics, a sort 
 of literary ban tarns, which are still 
 dear to memory, and awaken old 
 associations with their dwarfish 
 ribbed backs and their exquisite, 
 but now, alas! too minute, type. 
 The eyesight that could formerly 
 peruse them with ease has suf- 
 fered decay, but they remain un- 
 changed; and in this respect they 
 are unlike many other objects of 
 early interest. Children, homes, 
 flowers, animals, scenery even, 
 all have undergone mutation, but 
 no perceptible shade of change 
 has yet passed over these little 
 reminders of old times times 
 we would like to see again. 
 
28 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA ALDINE. LEADED.' 
 
 T is one notable feature 
 of the history of print- 
 ing, that a large por- 
 tion of those who have 
 successfully prosecuted the art have 
 been celebrated for their superior 
 knowledge of and attention to press- 
 work. It is too much the habit of 
 apprentices to devote their atten- 
 tion exclusively to composition, and 
 as a consequence compositors are 
 usually plenty and good pressmen 
 are comparatively scarce. All the 
 money and labor spent in purchas- 
 ing fonts of letter, and in setting 
 up type correctly and elegantly, is 
 well-nigh useless if bad press-work 
 mars the product of the type foun- 
 dry and the composing-room. The 
 work that is well balanced in all its 
 parts is a delight to the eye. 
 
 PRINTERS' CIRCULAR. 
 
29 
 
 DOUBLK SMALL PICA LIGHT FACK. LKADKD. 
 
 HEN some one of 
 our relations was 
 discovered to be a 
 bad character, or a 
 timiblesome guest, or one we 
 desired to get rid of, upon his 
 leaving my house I ever took 
 care to lend him a riding coat, 
 or a pair of boots, or sometimes 
 a horse of small value, and I 
 always had the satisfaction of 
 finding he never came back 
 to return them. By this the 
 house was cleared of such as 
 we did not like. Some of these 
 visitors did us no great honor 
 by their claims of kindred, as 
 we had the blind, the maimed 
 and the halt among the num- 
 ber. However, my wife always 
 insisted that they should sit 
 with us at the same table. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
30 
 GREAT PRIMER No. 20. SOLID. 
 
 jND let us, after all, acknowledge 
 that there are few men who are 
 entirely above the influence of 
 binding. No one likes sheep's 
 if 51 clothing for his literature, even 
 if he should not aspire to russia or morocco. 
 Adam Smith, one of the least showy of men, 
 confessed himself to be a beau in his books. 
 Poets, however, are apt to be ragamuffins. 
 It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut 
 the leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an 
 event in his early career may have soured 
 him. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever, 
 active mechanic, who could do many things 
 with his hands, and contemplated James's 
 indolent, dreamy, "reckless" character with 
 impatient disgust. When the first of "The 
 Seasons" "Winter" it was, I believe had 
 been completed at press, Jamie thought, by 
 a presentation copy, to triumph over his 
 uncle's skepticism, and to propitiate his good 
 opinion he had the book handsomely bound. 
 The old man never looked inside, or asked 
 what the book was about, but, turning it 
 round and round with his fingers in gratified 
 admiration, exclaimed "Come, is that real- 
 ly our Jamie's doin' now? Weel, I never 
 thought the cratur wad hae had the handi- 
 craft to do the like !" 
 
 BURTON. 
 
GKKAT PRIMER No. 16. SOLID. 
 
 you know that all Grub-Street 
 was dead and gone last week ? 
 No more ghosts or murders now 
 for love or money. I worked it 
 
 1 very close the last fortnight, and 
 published at least seven papers of my own, 
 besides some of other people's ; but now every 
 single half-sheet pays a halfpenny tribute to 
 the queen. The 'Observator' is fallen; the 
 'Medleys' are jumbled together with the 
 'Flying Post'; the 'Examiner' is deadly 
 sick; the ' Spectator' keeps up and doubles 
 its price; I know not how long it will hold. 
 Have you seen the red stamp the papers are 
 marked with ? I think the stamping alone is 
 worth a halfpenny." The stamp mark upon 
 the newspapers was a rose and thistle joined 
 by the stalks, and inclosing between the Irish 
 shamrock ; the whole three were surmounted 
 by a crown. It was also enacted "that one 
 printed copy of every pamphlet, printed or 
 published within London or Westminster, or 
 the weekly bill of mortality, shall within six 
 days after the printing be brought to the head 
 office, and the title thereof, with the number 
 of sheets, and the duty hereby charged, shall 
 be entered; which duty shall be paid to the 
 receiver-general, who shall give a receipt for 
 the same, etc. 
 
 9? 
 
 SWIFT. 
 
GREAT PRIMER No. 20. LEADED. 
 
 UBSCRIBERS for one copy 
 of the "Arizona Kicker" will be 
 presented with a box of Patent 
 Petroleum Paste Blacking. This 
 is a superior article. It blacks boots or 
 stoves, and may be used as a hair dye. 
 
 Subscribers for two single copies will 
 receive a box of French-American sardines. 
 
 Subscribers for five copies at the same 
 time will be presented with a pair of iron- 
 clad spectacles with real glass eyes, war- 
 ranted to suit one age as well as another. 
 
 Subscribers for ten copies simultane- 
 ously will be entitled to a patent adjustable 
 boot-jack which can also be used as a cork- 
 screw, a coffee-mill, or an inkstand. 
 
 Subscribers for twenty-five copies, as 
 above, will receive a marble bureau with 
 a mahogany top, custom made. 
 
 Subscribers for fifty copies, like con- 
 dition, will receive a seven-octave sewing 
 machine with the Agraff attachment. 
 
 If any person should desire to subscribe 
 for a larger number of copies, and is pre- 
 pared to pay for the same at sight, he may 
 address this office for a special inducement. 
 
 HUDSON'S JOURNALISM. 
 
33 
 GREAT PRIMER No. 16. LEADED. 
 
 il 
 
 HE pages of a book or a magazine 
 | should never be cut open with any- 
 thing but a paper-cutter. A finger 
 I is too blunt, and tears the edges. 
 
 A knife is too sharp, and may cut the edges 
 unequally. The best paper-cutter is a thin 
 slip of ivory. Wood and bone are nearly as 
 good, but metal is not. Never deface books 
 in any way. Never scribble on them needless- 
 ly, or disfigure them with unnecessary stamps, 
 or with stamps in inappropriate places. A 
 good book is a good friend, and ought to 
 be treated with the respect due to a friend. 
 Never wet your fingers to turn over a leaf. 
 Never turn down a corner of a page to hold 
 your place. Never put in a soiled playing- 
 card, or a stained envelope, or a bit of dirty 
 string, or a piece of damp newspaper. Al- 
 ways use a regular book-mark. The sim- 
 plest, and one of the best, is a card as large 
 as a small visiting card. By cutting this 
 card twice longitudinally from one end almost 
 to the other, you will have a three-legged 
 book-mark which rides a-straddle of the page 
 one leg on the page below and two on the 
 page you wish to open at. 
 
 ARTHUR PENN. 
 
34 
 GREAT PRIMER No. 15. LEADED. 
 
 ASTES in color seem to be limited 
 geographically. In Italy books are 
 bound mostly in white parchment; 
 in France, in red morocco ; in Eng- 
 land royal purple was the prevailing tint, and 
 in America it is brown. There are many ex- 
 ceptional instances. The founder of the great 
 Harleian Library, now a part of the British 
 Museum, clad all the volumes he collected in 
 red morocco. Beckford, a superb bibliophile, 
 used unvaryingly an olive-colored binding. Dr. 
 Cogswell, who organized the Astor Library, in- 
 sisted on having quite a considerable number of 
 volumes bound in blue skiver backs and corners. 
 Thomas P. Barton, to whom Richard Grant 
 White dedicated his Shakespeare, went to enor- 
 mous expense, risk, and trouble to rebind his 
 Shakespearean collection, which was very large, 
 uniformly in red morocco. He often purchased 
 a rare work at some celebrated library in Europe, 
 and found it gorgeously finished in purple or 
 green; but in order to carry out his whim the 
 beautiful cover had to be torn off and the vol- 
 ume rebound to match his collection. George 
 T. Strong, a gentleman of very quiet but elegant 
 taste, had a preference for sober browns. 
 
35 
 GREAT PRIMER LIGHT FACE. LEADED. 
 
 TORN page of a book may 
 be neatly mended in the 
 following manner : Pro- 
 cure paper similar to the 
 original leaf, cut it to correspond 
 exactly with the missing portion, 
 adjust it precisely to the torn edge 
 and touch the line of junction very 
 lightly "with paste made from rice 
 flour ; then place a strip of tissue 
 paper on each side of the leaf and 
 smooth out carefully with a folder. 
 Close the volume and allow it to 
 dry thoroughly ; remove the tissue 
 paper with a delicate touch, and 
 the portions that remain adhering 
 to the seam or line of junction will 
 prove sufficient -to secure the new 
 patch to the leaf. In supplying 
 the wanting text, an imitation of 
 the original adds much to the api- 
 pearance of the page. Ventilation 
 and light will prevent books from 
 suffering from mold and weather- 
 stain ; dusting and use preserve 
 them from insects. 
 
36 
 GREAT PRIMER ORNAMENTED No. 1526. LEADED. 
 
 dklled 
 
 \ool booM, Ikw 
 
 idkl kqd tedl\nidkl wofk$, kfe u^uklly 
 ^udde^ful, fof tl\ey kfe bk^ed upon ^e- 
 tl\e extent of wl)icil| <iar\ be ^ti^ed witt\ 
 oif le^ kddufkdy. On tl\e otl\ef 
 tl\e pnblicktioi| of book^ ii\ litei'ktui'e 
 
 r\ d^kfkdtef, ^ir\de ttje 
 by Ikw^ wl\idl\ itoif\ t^eif 
 dai\i\ot be, of kt ki\y tkte kfe i)ot, pfopefly de- 
 It ig po^ible to ki\ow kbont l\ow 
 fe kf e iq k dommuiiity^ ki\d 
 tl\e numbei 4 of doj)ie^ tl\ey will tkke of a l\ki)d- 
 book iof tl\eif pi'ofe^ioi\ ; it i^ in|po^ible to 
 iofn\ mofe tl\kr\ tl\e mefe^t ^ue^ k^ to 
 mkt\y fekdei 4 ^ ii| tl\e dommnruty will 
 to k poen\ wl\idl\ l\k^ ju^t beer\ dfekted. 
 
 rq kll otl\er kii\d^ of ^j)edulktioi\, tl\e out- 
 publid ^ekf^ of tl\e ^kqd ^udde^e^, ki\d 
 tkke^ little kddoni|t of tl\e rqi^efkble fkilufe^. 
 l\e kutl^oi 4 wl\o^e book fkil^ dkt\ fii\d ^ome 
 i^fkdtioi) it\ dfkwir\^ kr\d qukftefiii^ tl\e 
 ii\ k privkte diddle of Mei\d$. But tl\e pub- 
 li$l\ef i^ like tl\e iti^nfknde doir|pki\y kftef k 
 fife- -i\obody wkste^ kr^y pity oi| l)in|. 
 i0 tl\e fedonqpen^e of kll wl\o 
 
 KIVKRSIOE BULLETIN. 
 
37 
 TWO-LINE PEARL OLD STYLE CONDENSED. QUADRUPLE LEADED. 
 
 ANTE one day went to the house of a bookseller, 
 from one of whose windows he had been invit- 
 ed to witness a public show exhibited in the 
 square below ; taking up by chance a book, he soon be- 
 came so absorbed in it that on returning home he sol- 
 emnly declared he had neither seen nor heard anything 
 whatever of all that had taken place before his eyes. 
 Virgil was so fond of salt that he seldom went without 
 a box full in his pocket, which he made use of from time 
 to time as men of the present day use tobacco. Thomas 
 Hood was born, married, and died in the month of May. 
 A curious calculation has been made, resulting in the 
 statement that the single word "[laughter]" in the "Con- 
 gressional Globe," as it occurs in the speeches of Con- 
 gressmen, has during the last thirty years cost the 
 government about fifteen hundred dollars, while the 
 word " [applause] " has cost twice that sum. An editor's 
 loaded pistol having been purloined by some daring 
 scamp, he advertises that if the thief will return it he 
 will give him the contents and no questions asked. A 
 Western editor met a well educated farmer recently, 
 and said to him that he would like to have something 
 from his pen ; the farmer sent him a pig, and charged 
 him $9.75 for it. A bachelor editor, who had a pretty 
 unmarried sister, wrote to another editor similarly cir- 
 cumstanced, "Please exchange." Dr. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes has made most fame as a writer, but most money 
 as a very successful physician and surgeon. . 
 
38 
 
 ENGLISH No. 20. SOLID. 
 
 ANY people, besides politicians, are of 
 opinion that they ought to be able easily 
 to make their living in journalism. We 
 know men who have an idea that be- 
 cause their clever, off-hand critiques of 
 authors and their bright, descriptive sketches have 
 moved the admiration of the home circle, therefore 
 they are fully equipped to " write for the newspapers." 
 We may inform these persons that journalism is 
 work, unostentatious drudgery, a profession which 
 exacts of its votaries the most constant labor dry, 
 hard, and not infrequently repulsive labor. To read 
 a book at one's leisure, and then sketch the features 
 in it for a friend or relative in the familiar style of 
 personal intercourse, is one affair. To cram a vol- 
 ume down one's mental throat in a half-hour, and be 
 able to show up the points most representative of its 
 merits and defects, requires years of training added 
 to rare adaptability for the work. 
 
 The journalist, if fit to' be so designated, must daily 
 go patiently over at least one representative news- 
 paper of each party from every section of the country. 
 An editor, or a contributor of the higher order, 
 must be "up" in all that concerns his own constitu- 
 ency, and well posted in all that goes forward of the 
 large events in the civilized world. Writing is but 
 a small part of his labor. To know what to write, 
 when to write it, and just how much to write like 
 Dogberry's reading and writing these instincts 
 come largely by nature. Editors of the very high- 
 est order "are born, not made." 
 
 Editors and publishers who succeed are those not 
 merely adapted by mental structure to the business, 
 but they are also the men or women who work 
 systematically and spare not themselves, regardless 
 whether the great public smiles or frowns upon the 
 fruits of their labors. 
 
39 
 ENGLISH No. 16. SOLID. 
 
 ||HERE is no safer property in which to invest 
 money than in good books and good pictures, 
 provided, of course, they are bought with good 
 judgment and a knowledge of their real value, 
 which, in the case of books, depends largely upon their 
 rarity. Turner's drawing of Bamborough Castle was 
 purchased in 1858 for 400; it was sold in 1859 for 
 450, and in 1872, at Mr. Gillott's sale, for 3,307. 
 His picture of the Grand Canal, for which he received 
 300, brought at auction, in July last, 7,350, the 
 largest sum ever paid for a picture in this W 7 ay. David 
 Cox painted his picture of Rhyl for 160 guineas ; it was 
 sold four years ago for 2,300. His Hayfield, for which 
 he received about the same price, sold in July last for 
 2,950. Muller painted his Chess Players in 1843 for 
 25; it was sold in 1874 for 4,053. A copy of the 
 Mazarin Bible on vellum brought, at the Perkins sale, 
 3,500. When next offered for sale it will probably 
 bring 5,000. Eliot's Indian Bible could be bought a 
 few years ago for |500. A copy is now offered for sale 
 in London, on Quaritch's catalogue, for the quotation of 
 $1,500 in gold. A copy of the first English translation 
 of the Bible by Coverdale fetched 360. A Latin Bible, 
 printed by Jenson in 1476, on vellum, was sold recently 
 for 370 ; a first edition of the Bible in German, for 75 ; 
 and another, without date or printer's name, but supposed 
 to have been printed circa 1473 at Augsburg, for 32. 
 An early Latin Psalm, on vellum, with miniatures in the 
 Anglo-Saxon style, has just brought 79. Boccaccio's 
 Decameron, first edition of Valdarfer, 1471, was trans- 
 ferred from the Duke of Roxburghe to the Duke of 
 Marlborough for 2,260. In the year 1300 some books 
 bequeathed to Merton College, Oxford, were thus valued : 
 a Concordentia, 10 shillings; the Four Great Prophets, 5 
 shillings ; a Psalter, 10 shillings ; St. Augustine on Gen- 
 esis, 10 shillings. What amounts do you think these 
 could be made to fetch in a modern auction room'? 
 
 AMERICAN BIBLIOPOLIST. 
 
40 
 ENGLISH No. 20. LEADED. 
 
 In 
 
 ijN printing, it seemeth that China ought 
 ! to have the precedence of other nations, 
 ; for according to their books they have 
 t used it there sixteen hundred years ; but 
 it is not, as I said before, like unto ours in Europe, 
 for their letters are engraved on tables of wood. 
 The author of the book ordereth what letter he will 
 have, either great, little, or middle-sized ; or, rather, 
 he giveth his manuscript to the graver, who maketh 
 his tables of the same bigness with the sheets that 
 are given him, and, pasting the leaves upon the 
 tables with the wrong side outwards, he engraveth 
 the letters as he findeth them, with much facility and 
 exactness, and without making any errata. Their 
 writing is not upon both sides the paper, as among 
 us, but on one side only ; and the reason that their 
 books seem to be written on both sides is, because 
 the white side is hidden within the fold. 
 
 They print likewise with tables of stone, with this 
 difference, that the paper is made all black and the 
 letters remain white, because when they print thus, 
 they lay the ink upon the superficies of the stone ; 
 but in the tables of wood they put it only in the 
 hollow of the engraving. This printing serveth only 
 for epitaphs, pictures, trees, mountains, and such like 
 things, whereof they do desire to have the memo- 
 ries preserved, and they have very many prints of 
 this kind. Any work which they print, as they do 
 in great numbers, remaineth always entire in the 
 print on the tables, to be repeated as often as they 
 please, without any new expense or trouble in set- 
 ting for the press as there is in our printing. 
 
ENGLISH No. 16. LEADED. 
 
 HE first time a man looks at 
 an advertisement he does 
 not see it. The second 
 time, he does not notice it. 
 The third time, he is dimly 
 conscious of it. The fourth 
 time, he faintly remembers 
 having seen something of 
 the kind before. The fifth 
 time, he half reads it. The 
 sixth time, he turns up his nose at it. The seventh time, 
 he reads it through and says, "Pshaw!" The eighth time, 
 he ejaculates, "Here's that confounded thing again!" 
 The ninth time, he wonders if "there's anything in it." 
 The tenth time, he thinks it might possibly suit some one 
 else's case. The eleventh time, he thinks he will ask 
 his neighbor if he has tried it or knows anything about 
 it. The twelfth time, he wonders how the advertiser 
 can make it pay. The thirteenth time, he rather thinks 
 it must be a good thing. The fourteenth time, he 
 appears to think it is what he has wanted for a long 
 time. The fifteenth time, he resolves to try it as soon 
 as he can afford it. The sixteenth time, he examines 
 the address carefully and makes a memorandum of it. 
 The seventeenth time, he is painfully reminded how much 
 he needs that particularly excellent article. The eigh- 
 teenth time, he counts his money to see how much he 
 would have left if he bought it ; and the nineteenth time, 
 he frantically rushes in a fit of desperation and buys it. 
 Moral : The successful tradesman keeps his name before 
 the public by persistent advertising. 
 
42 
 PICA No. 20. SOLID. 41 LINES, 395 WORDS. 
 
 VEN logic has not succeeded as yet in discovering 
 the means of framing a title-page which shall be 
 exhaustive, as it is termed, and constitute an infal- 
 lible finger-post to the nature of a book. From the 
 beginning of all literature it may be said that man 
 has been continually struggling after this achievement, and 
 struggling in vain ; and it is a humiliating fact that the 
 greatest adepts, abandoning the effort in despair, have taken 
 refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their pur- 
 pose better than the best results of their logical analysis. 
 The book which has been the supreme ruler of the intellect 
 in this kind of work stands forth as an illustrious example 
 of failure. To those writings of Aristotle which dealt with 
 mind his editing pupils could give no name, therefore they 
 called them the things after the physics the Metaphysics; 
 and that fortuitous title the great arena of thought to which 
 they refer still bears, despite the efforts of critical students 
 to supply an apter designation in such words as Psychology, 
 Pneumatology, and Transcendentalism. 
 
 Writhing under this nightmare kind of difficulty, men in 
 later times tried to achieve completeness by lengthening the 
 title-page ; but they found that the longer they made it, the 
 more it wriggled itself into devious tracks, and the farther 
 did it depart from a comprehensive name. Some title-pages 
 in old folios make about half an hour's reading. One ad- 
 vantage, however, was found in these lengthy titles they 
 afforded to controversialists a means of condensing the pith 
 of their malignity towards each other, and throwing it, as it 
 were, right in the face of the adversary. It will thus often 
 happen that the controversialist states his case first in the 
 title-page ; he then gives it at greater length in the intro- 
 duction ; again, perhaps, in a preface ; a third time in an 
 analytical form, through means of a table of contents ; after 
 all this skirmishing, he brings up his heavy columns in the 
 body of the book. 
 
 Busy men of the present day look to the title-page to 
 help them in deciding what books to read, just as the head- 
 lines in their favorite newspapers inform them of current 
 events and invite or repel further research. It is better to 
 spend half an hour on an exhaustive title-page than to waste 
 several hours upon an uninstructive book. 
 
43 
 PICA No. ii. SOLID. 41 LINKS, 388 WORDS. 
 
 NDEED, volumes are in their varied external 
 conditions much like human beings. There 
 are some stout and others frail, some healthy 
 and others sickly ; and it happens often that 
 the least robust are the most precious. The full, fresh 
 health of some of the old folio fathers and schoolmen, 
 ranged side by side in solemn state on the oaken shelves 
 of some venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who 
 expect mouldy decay : the stiff, hard binding is as an- 
 gular as ever ; there is no abrasion of the leaves, not a 
 single dog-ear or a spot, nor even a dust-border upon the 
 mellowed white of the margin. So, too, of those quarto 
 civilians and canonists of Ley den and Amsterdam, with 
 their smooth white vellum coats, bearing so generic a 
 resemblance to Dutch cheeses that they might easily be 
 supposed to represent the experiments of some Grouda 
 dairyman on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life 
 and an established position in society are the secret of 
 their excellent preservation and condition. Their re- 
 pose has been little disturbed by intrusive readers and 
 unceremonious investigators, and their repute for solid 
 learning has given them a claim to attention and care- 
 ful preservation. It has sometimes occurred to me to 
 penetrate to the heart of one of these solid volumes and 
 find it closed in this wise : As the binder of a book is 
 himself bound to cut off as little as possible of its white 
 margin, it -may take place, if any of the leaves are in- 
 accurately folded, that their edges are not cut, and that, 
 as to such leaves, the book is in the uncut condition so 
 severely denounced by impatient readers. So have I 
 sometimes had to open with a paper-cutter the pages 
 which had shut up for two hundred years that knowl- 
 edge which the ponderous volume pretended to be dis- 
 tributing abroad from its place of dignity on the shelf. 
 Sometimes, also, there will drop out of a heavy folio a 
 little slip of orange-yellow paper covered with some 
 cabalistic-looking characters, which a careful study dis- 
 covers to be a hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that 
 the dealer from whom the volume was purchased would 
 be rather gratified than otherwise should the purchaser 
 be pleased to remit to him the price of it. 
 
44 
 PICA No. 20. LEADED. 35 LINES, 325 WORDS. 
 
 JR. JOHNSON published the following curious 
 1 advertisement in order to suppress the pirat- 
 j ical practice of inserting his Idlers, without any 
 
 acknowledgment, in other publications : 
 "London, January 5th, 1759. (Advertisement.) 
 "The proprietors of the papers entitled The Idler, having 
 found that those essays are inserted in the newspapers and 
 magazines with so little regard to justice or decency that 
 the Universal Chronicle, in which they first appear, is not 
 always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the pub- 
 lishers of those collections that, however patiently they have 
 hitherto endured these injuries, they have determined to en- 
 dure them no longer. They have seen essays for which a 
 very large price is paid transferred with the most shameless 
 rapacity into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their 
 right, at least for the present, alienated from them before 
 they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would 
 not Willingly be thought to want tenderness even for men 
 by whom no tenderness hath been shown. The past is 
 without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But 
 those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the 
 fields of their neighbours are henceforward to take notice 
 that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, 
 without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, 
 is to expect that we shall vindicate our due. We shall 
 lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from 
 the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract 
 them into a narrow space, and sell them at an humble 
 price ; yet not with a view of growing rich by confiscations, 
 for we think not much better of money got by punishment 
 than by crimes : we shall, therefore, when our losses are 
 repaid, give what profit shall remain to the magdalens : for 
 we know not who can be more properly taxed for the sup- 
 port of penitent prostitutes, than prostitutes in whom there 
 yet appears neither penitence nor shame." 
 
45 
 PICA No. ii. LEADED. 35 LINES, 353 WORDS. 
 
 OOKS I consider as spirits walking abroad on 
 the face of the earth. A book is a voice to 
 which one seems compelled to listen a voice 
 which addresses itself to you ; it is the living 
 thought of a person separated from you only by space of 
 time ; it is a burning intellect. The books collected in a 
 library, viewed with the eyes of the mind, represent to 
 us the master spirits of every country and of every age, 
 who are there present with us to speak, to instruct, and 
 to console us. Note that books alone endure ; men pass 
 away, monuments crumble into dust ; but what remains, 
 what survives, is human thought. I am told that Mo- 
 liere is dead ; I deny it. Is he not present ? When I 
 entertain myself with him, is he not there $ Madame 
 de Sevigne, they say, was buried in 1696. I maintain 
 that yesterday I was in communion with her. I know 
 her just as I know Coulanges, Madame de Grignon, La 
 Rochefoucauld, and all her friends. For me all that 
 world lives, and I live with them. The book, or rather 
 the intelligence preserved in the book, is society which 
 one can enjoy either in prosperous or in adverse days. 
 Do we wish for amusement ? Let us take up our "Don 
 Quixote" ; we shall laugh as we never laughed before. 
 Or are we in sorrow'? Read the "Imitation of Christ." 
 In whatever state we may be books are ever welcome. 
 On the eve of departure, is it not to a book we turn for 
 consolation ? Is it not the "Evangelists" that teach us 
 how to endure suffering by telling us of words of Him 
 who endured long misery and every suffering ? Every- 
 where and at all times a book is of use, and he who can 
 read has more enjoyment at his command than many a 
 monarch, for he has a court of faithful friends who ever 
 surround and minister to him. Our friends often weary 
 us ; but if a book fatigues us we put it aside without 
 any fear of its being offended, and take up another. 
 
 M. LABOULAYE. 
 
4 6 
 PICA No. 15. LEADED. 35 LINES, 374 WORDS. 
 
 INTERS are often asked in what way various kinds 
 of paper obtained the peculiar names they bear. Here 
 is the answer : In ancient times, when comparatively 
 few people could read, pictures of every kind were 
 much in use where writing is now employed. Every shop, for 
 instance, had its sign, as well as every public house, and those 
 signs were not then, as they often are now, only painted on a 
 board, but were invariably actual -models of the thing which the 
 sign expressed as we still occasionally see some such sign as a 
 bee-hive, a tea-canister, a doll, or the like. For the same reason 
 printers employed some device, which they put upon their title- 
 pages and at the end of their books. And paper-makers also 
 introduced marks by way of distinguishing the paper of their 
 manufacture from that of others. These marks, becoming com- 
 mon, naturally gave their names to different sorts of paper. A 
 favorite paper-mark between 1540 and 1560 was the jug or pot, 
 and would appear to have originated the term pot paper. The 
 fool's cap was a later device, and does not seem to have been 
 nearly of such long continuance as the former. It has given 
 place to the figure of Britannia, or that of a lion rampant sup- 
 porting the cap of liberty on a pole. The name, however, has 
 continued, and we still denominate paper of a particular size by 
 the title of "foolscap." Post paper seems to have derived its 
 name from the post-horn, which at one time was its distinguishing 
 mark. It does not appear to have been used prior to the estab- 
 lishment of the General Post Office (1670), when it became the 
 custom to blow a horn; to which circumstance, no doubt, we may 
 attribute its introduction. Bath post is so named after that fash- 
 ionable city. Demy is from the French demi, signifying an 
 intermediate size. Royal and crown explain their origin, and 
 many other names, such as commercial and packet note, check 
 folio, medium, super-royal, imperial, elephant, columbier, atlas, 
 double medium, and double elephant, were invented to denote 
 some early peculiarity of size, use, or mark, which, though the 
 name remains, has now nearly or quite disappeared. 
 
 LONDON PRINTERS' REGISTER. 
 
47 
 PICA LIGHT FACE. LEADED. 35 LINES, 293 WORDS. 
 
 OR Bookes are not absolutely dead 
 things, but they doe contain a poten- 
 cie of life in them to be as active as 
 that soule was whose progeny they 
 are ; nay they do preserve as in a violl 
 the purest efficacie and extraction 
 of that living intellect that bred them. I know 
 they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, 
 as those fabulous Dragons teeth ; and being sown 
 up and down, may chance to spring up armed 
 men. And yet on the other hand unlesse wari- 
 nesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill 
 a good Book ; who kills a Man kills a reasonable 
 creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a 
 good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the very 
 Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a 
 man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good 
 Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master 
 spirit, imbalin'd and treasured up on purpose 
 to a life beyond life. Tis true, no age can re- 
 store a life, whereof perhaps there is no great 
 losse ; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover 
 the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of 
 which whole Nations fare the worse. We should 
 be wary therefore what persecution we raise 
 against the living labours of publick men, how 
 we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and 
 stored up in Books ; since we see a kinde of homi- 
 cide may be thus committed, sometimes a mar- 
 tyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impres- 
 sion, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution 
 ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but 
 strikes at that ethereall and fift [first] essence, 
 the breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality 
 rather than a life. 
 
4 8 
 ELZEVIR, BODY 14. LEADED. 29 LINES, 253 WORDS. 
 
 I RISTOTLE tells us that the world is a copy 
 | or transcript of those ideas which are in 
 SI- the mind of the first Being, and that those 
 ideas which are in the mind of man are a transcript 
 of the world. To this may be added, that words 
 are the transcript of those ideas which are in the 
 mind of man, and that writing or printing are the 
 transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has 
 expressed and as it were printed his ideas in the 
 creation, men express their ideas in books, which 
 by this great invention of these latter ages may last 
 as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in 
 the general wreck of nature. . . . There is no 
 other method of fixing those thoughts which arise 
 and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting 
 them to the last periods of time ; no other method 
 of giving a permanency to our ideas and preserving 
 the knowledge of any particular period, when his 
 body shall for ages have been mixed with the 
 common mass of matter and his soul retired into 
 the world of spirits. 
 
 Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves 
 to mankind, which are delivered down from gen- 
 eration to generation, as presents to the posterity 
 of those who are yet unborn . Knowledge of books 
 in a man of business is a torch in the hands of 
 one who is willing and able to show those who are 
 bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON, "The Spectator." 
 
49 
 PICA EXPANDED. TREBLE LEADED. 27 LINES, 121 WORDS. 
 
 delightful 
 reading I found 
 in the literature 
 
 1 of those times ! 
 
 There was 110 "Philadelphia Led- 
 ger/ 9 font v^e regaled onrselves 
 with Joseph R. Chandler's "Let- 
 ters from my Armchair 9 ' in the 
 "United States Gazette/ 9 There 
 was no "New -York Trifonne/ 5 
 font we foecame inspired foy the 
 splendid typography and ner- 
 vons Saxon of Horace Q-reeley 9 s 
 "Weekly New-Yorker/ 9 There 
 was no 'Atlantic 99 or " Harper 9 s, 93 
 font we revelled in the pages of 
 ^W^aldie 9 s Library. ^W^e had no 
 Macanlay or Bancroft, font v^e 
 had Hinton and Hildreth. ^Wo 
 had no Dickens, or Thackeray, 
 or Charles Reade, or "Wilkie Col- 
 lins, or Oliver "W^endell Holmes, 
 or Alfred Tennyson, font v^e 
 lived in the gorgeons v^orld of 
 TV^alter Scott, made mnsical 
 with the enchanting melodies of 
 Thomas Moore. 
 
 JOHN W. FORNEY. 
 
50 
 PICA No. 20. DOUBLE LEADED. 31 LINES, 301 WORDS. 
 
 OW paradoxical a character a man may become, 
 is described in the autobiography of Solom 
 Maimon, one of the most learned men and 
 sharpest casuists of the Hebrew race. He was, 
 according to a reviewer of the work, a " skeptical rabbi, a 
 great Talmudist who despised the Talmud, an omnivorous 
 reader of all such science as in the last century a Polish Jew 
 could get hold of, a genuine idler in literature, who, although 
 he could dash off a considerable spell of work in a short time, 
 had no work in him, had no method in him, and always pre- 
 ferred slipshod effort to steady industry ; a man whom want 
 and misery had reduced into spasmodic fits of intemperance, 
 which rather grew upon him toward the end." With all this 
 he spent a half year of his life as a regular professional beg- 
 gar adopting apparently all the habits and feelings of a 
 beggar. "None the less he was a man of remarkable ac- 
 quirements, being a learned Talmudist, for those times at 
 least a considerable mathematician, and having in middle life 
 mastered Latin, German, French, and English, besides the 
 various Eastern dialects of which his Hebrew knowledge 
 was the foundation. He had evidently a very great turn for 
 physics as well as for mathematics, and a wonderful capacity 
 for the acquisition of languages without the slightest com- 
 munication with those who could speak them, so that he knew 
 a language fairly well of which he could not properly pro- 
 nounce a single sentence." He so criticized Kant's greatest 
 work as to excite the admiration of the author. In charac- 
 ter "he was candid, grateful, generous, and full of kindly 
 feelings. But he was conceited, irreverent, passionate, in- 
 tolerant of the influence of others, and never really at ease 
 among the class for which his knowledge fitted him." 
 
 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 
 
PICA No. ii. DOUBLE LEADED. 31 LINES, 297 WORDS. 
 
 RjHALL I tell you what, reader? But first I 
 should call you gentle, courteous, and wise ; 
 but 'tis no matter, they're but foolish words 
 of course, and better left out than printed : 
 for if you be so, you need not be called so ; and if you 
 be not so, then were lawe against me for calling you 
 out of your names. By John of Powles churchyard I 
 sweare, and that oath will be taken at any haberdasher's, 
 I never wisht this booke a better fortune than to fall 
 into the hands of a true spelling printer, and an honest 
 stitching bookseller ; and if honestie could be soulde by 
 the bushell, like oysters, I had rather have one bushell 
 of honestie than three of monie. 
 
 Why I call these Father HubbarcFs Tales, is not to 
 have them called in againe as the tales of Mother Hub- 
 lard; the worlde would shewe little judgment in that 
 yfaith, and I should say then plena stultorum omnia. 
 For I entreat here neither of rugged beares nor apes ; 
 no, nor the lamentable downefal of the olde wives' plat- 
 ters ; I deale with no such mettall. What is mirth in 
 mee is harmlesse as the Quarter Jack in Powles, they 
 are up with their elbowes foure times an houre, and yet 
 misuse no creature living. The verie bitterest in mee 
 is but a physical frost, that nips the wicked blood a 
 little, and so makes the whole bodie the more whole- 
 somer. Then to condemn these tales following, because 
 Father Hubbard tells them in the small syze of an ant, 
 is even as much as, if these two wordes God and Devil 
 were printed both in one line, to skip it over, and say 
 that line were naught, because the Devil were in it; 
 Sat Sapienti. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM PREFACE. 
 
52 
 
 SMALL PICA No. 20. SOLID. 46 LINES, 512 WORDS. 
 
 [HERE are thousands of mole-eyed people who count 
 all passion in print a lie, people who will go into a 
 rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in secret, 
 and hope without mention, and cover it all under the 
 cloak of what they call propriety. I can see before 
 me now some gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very 
 correct, very cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, 
 and his Bible with determination, who listens to dull sermons with 
 patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause ; and yet there 
 are moments belonging to his life when his curdled affections yearn 
 for something that they have not, when his avarice oversteps all 
 the commandments, when his .pride builds castles full of splendor; 
 and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless 
 air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction what cannot be 
 proven to the elders. . . . The trouble has been, that those 
 who have believed one passage have discredited another ; and those 
 who have sympathized with me in trifles have deserted me when 
 affairs grew earnest. . . . 
 
 I have only one thing more to say before I get upon my story. 
 A great many sharp-eyed people, who have a horror of light read- 
 ing, by which they mean whatever does not make mention of 
 stocks, cottons, or moral homilies, will find much fault with my 
 book for its ephemeral character. I am sorry that I cannot gratify 
 such : homilies are not at all in my habit ; and it does seem to me 
 an exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to hammer it down 
 to a single point, so that there shall be only one chance of driving 
 it home. For my own part, I count it a great deal better philoso- 
 phy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread out into every 
 crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it were, to the 
 whole mass. 
 
 I know there are very good people, who, if they cannot lay their 
 finger on so much doctrine set down in old-fashioned phrase, will 
 never get an inkling of it at all. With such people, goodness is a 
 thing of understanding more than of feeling, and all their morality 
 has its action in the brain. God forbid that I should sneer at this 
 terrible infirmity which Providence has seen fit to inflict; God 
 forbid, too, that I should not be grateful to the same kind Provi- 
 dence for bestowing upon others among his creatures a more genial 
 apprehension of true goodness, and a hearty sympathy with every 
 shade of human kindness. 
 
 But in all this I am not making out a case for my own correct 
 teaching, or insinuating the propriety of my tone. I shall leave 
 the book, in this regard, to speak for itself; and whoever feels 
 himself growing worse for the reading, I advise him to lay it down. 
 It will be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the 
 hand. 
 
 IK MARVEL, Preface to "Dream-Life." 
 
53 
 
 SMAIJ.PICANO.II. SOLID. 46 LINKS, 485 WORDS. 
 
 
 
 ^-Y;' I HERE is no treasure in this life like a love for 
 \ I books, for they are safe guides in youth and a 
 
 1 H / solace in age. A book is your best companion 
 
 * * at all times. In choosing a book, as in choosing 
 
 **- a dictionary, we ought to follow the advice of the 
 
 1 advertisements and Get the Best. In literature as 
 in life we should keep the best company we can. Life is short 
 and libraries are big ; and precious time is lost in reading fee- 
 ble writing which unfits us for stronger food. Emerson's three 
 rules for reading were : 1. Never read any book that is not a 
 year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read 
 any books but what you like. That these were sound rules for 
 Emerson himself we need not doubt, but they are a little too 
 rigid and restricting for most of us. Mr. F. B. Perkins, in his 
 interesting notes on " Courses of Reading," suggests that Emer- 
 son's rules would be perfect if to each were added the clause, 
 " unless you choose." The advice of Goethe is the advice of 
 Emerson. "Do not read your fellow-strivers, your fellow- 
 workers," said Goethe. And Mr. Matthew Arnold adds, " Of 
 the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully around 
 us, we can, indeed, hardly read too little." This is a hard say- 
 ing for the man or woman who seeks in books temporary rest 
 and relief after the toil and harass and stress of daily life. 
 Most of us have not the high and cultivated taste which finds 
 more enjoyment in Homer, or Dante, or Milton, than in a light 
 and lively tale of to-day. And for most of us, therefore, the 
 advice of Goethe, Emerson, and Mr. Arnold is too severe, and 
 must be broadened and brightened. Yet there can be no doubt 
 that they are right in the main, and that the nearer we come 
 to the attainment of this ideal, the better it will be for us. 
 The man who has grasped the inner beauty of the Greek and 
 Roman classics has laid hold of a noble thing, for they are 
 among the best that has been thought and said in the world. 
 There are many classics Greek and Latin, Italian and French, 
 English and American. "Robinson Crusoe" is as genuine a 
 classic as "Paradise Lost." Homer, Dante, and Goethe are 
 classics truly, but they are not more truly classic than Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, Walter Scott, or Henry Wads worth Long- 
 fellow. "A classic," says Lowell, "is properly a book which 
 maintains itself by virtue of that happy coalescence of matter 
 and style, that innate and exquisite sympathy between the 
 thought that gives life and the form which consents to every 
 mood of grace and dignity, which can be simple without being 
 vulgar, elevated without being distant, and which is some- 
 thing neither ancient nor modern, always new, arid incapable 
 of growing old." 
 
 THE HOME LIBRARY. 
 
54 
 SMALL PICA No. 20. LEADED. 39 LINES, 385 WORDS. 
 
 ROPOSALS for the Printing of a large Bible, by William 
 Bradford, January 14, 1688. These are to give Notice, 
 that it is proposed for a large house- Bible to be Printed 
 by way of Subscriptions [a method usual in England for 
 the printing of large Volumns, because Printing is very chargeable]. 
 Therefore to all that are willing to forward so good a Work, as the 
 Printing of the holy Bible, are offered these Proposals, viz. : 
 
 1. That it shall be printed in a fair Character, on good Paper, and 
 well bound. 
 
 2. That it shall contain the Old and New Testament, with the 
 Apocraphy, and all to have useful Marginal Notes. 
 
 3. That it shall be allowed (to them that subscribe) for Twenty 
 Shillings per Bible : [A Price which one of the same volumns in 
 England would cost.] 
 
 4. That the pay shall be half Silver Money, and half Country 
 Produce at Money price. One half down now, and the other half 
 on the delivery of the Bibles. 
 
 5. That those who do subscribe for six, shall have the seventh 
 gratis, and have them delivered one month before any above that 
 number shall be sold to others. 
 
 6. To those which do not subscribe, the said Bibles will not be 
 allowed under 26 s. a piece. 
 
 7. Those who are minded to have the Common-Prayer, shall 
 have the whole bound up for 22 s., and those that do not subscribe 
 28 s. and 6 d. per Book. 
 
 8. That as encouragement is given by Peoples subscribing and 
 paying down one half, the said Work will be put forward with what 
 Expedition may be. 
 
 9. That the Subscribers may enter their Subscriptions and time 
 of Payment, at Pheneas Pemberton's and Robert Hall's in the 
 County of Bucks. At Malen Stacy's Mill at the Falls. At Thomas 
 Budd's House in Burlington. At John Hasting's in the County of 
 Chester. At Edward Blake's in New- Castle. At Thomas Vvood- 
 rooff's in Salem. And at William Bradford's in Philadelphia, 
 Printer and Undertaker of the said Work. At which places the 
 Subscribers shall have a Receipt for so much of their Subscriptions 
 as paid and an obligation for the delivery of the number of Bibles 
 (so Printed and Bound as aforesaid) as the respective Subscribers 
 shall deposit one half for. 
 
 HUDSON'S JOURNALISM. 
 
55 
 SMALL PICA No. n. LEADED. 39 LINES, 438 WORDS. 
 
 T is not easy to advise exactly as to the best way 
 of buying books, since so much depends on cir- 
 cumstance and situation. In general, it is best 
 to make a friend of the most active and intelligent 
 bookseller within reach. Decide on the sum you 
 can afford to spend this year. Make out a list of the books 
 you want. Take this to the bookseller and ask him to get you 
 the books, and to allow you a fair discount proportionate to 
 the size of the order. After these books have come, keep on 
 good terms with the bookseller. Form the habit of dropping 
 into his store now and again to see what he has likely to suit 
 you. Lay aside a fixed sum annually to be spent in books. 
 Consult with the bookseller as to the best means of laying this 
 out to advantage. Remember that in general it is best to deal 
 directly and regularly with an established bookseller. Beware 
 of the itinerant book-peddler ; most of his books are made to 
 sell, and are not worth reading. Beware of the canvassing 
 agent, unless he represents a reputable house. Never buy at 
 auction unless you have had an opportunity previously to ex- 
 amine the goods to see that they have no defects, and are in 
 every way in good condition. Remember that the highest- 
 priced books are not necessarily the best, or the lowest-priced 
 necessarily the cheapest. Choose good type, and good paper, 
 and good ink, even if they cost a little more ; it is false to 
 spare the pocket and spoil the eyes. A book that is worth 
 buying at all is worth buying in good condition and in a good 
 edition. When in doubt between two editions of the same 
 standard book, choose that which has the fullest index. In 
 buying second-hand books and many, if not most, standard 
 works can best be had second-hand from a dealer in old books 
 ^ it costs but little more to get a copy well bound in morocco, 
 in half roan, or even in half calf. A second-hand book sells 
 on its own merits independent of its binding, and by biding 
 your time and looking about you can generally pick up a 
 neatly bound copy for the price you would pay for a copy in 
 cloth or in boards ; and even if it is second-hand, there is twice 
 the satisfaction to be got out of a book you own than is to be 
 got out of a book only borrowed. Own all the books you can, 
 and use all the books you own. 
 
 THE HOME LIBRARY. 
 
56 
 
 SMALL PICA No. 20. DOUBLE LEADED. 33 LINES, 368 WORDS. 
 
 |j^f] 
 |jN Books we find the dead as it were living; in Books 
 \ ^l Jyi^HPf 
 1 we foresee things to come ; in Books warlike affairs 
 
 are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed from 
 Books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. 
 Saturn never ceases to devour those whom he generates ; insomuch 
 that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had 
 not provided mortals with a remedy in Books. Alexander, the 
 ruler of the world ; Julius, the invader of the world and of the city, 
 the first who in unity of person assumed the empire in arms and 
 arts ; the faithful Fabricius, the rigid Cato, would at this day have 
 been without a memorial if the assistance of Books had failed them. 
 Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown, triumphal arches 
 mouldered to dust ; nor can the king or Pope be found upon whom 
 the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than 
 by Books. A Book made, renders succession to the author : for 
 as long as the book exists the author cannot perish. The Truth 
 written in a book, being not fluctuating, but permanent, shows 
 itself openly to the sight, passing through the spiritual ways of 
 the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagina- 
 tion ; it enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself on the couch 
 of memory, and there congenerates the eternal Truth of the mind. 
 Consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in Books, how 
 easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human 
 ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who 
 instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, 
 without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not 
 asleep ; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal noth- 
 ing; if you mistake them, they never grumble ; if you are ignorant, 
 they cannot laugh at you. You only, O Books, are liberal and in- 
 dependent. You give to all who ask, and enfranchise all who serve 
 you assiduously. You are golden urns in which manna is laid up, 
 rocks flowing with honey, or rather indeed honey-combs; udders 
 most copiously yielding the milk of life ; store-rooms ever full. 
 
 RICHARD DE BURY, Bishop of Durham. 
 
57 
 SMALL PICA No. 11. DOUBLE LEADED. 33 LINES, 350 WORDS. 
 
 Commerce of Books comforts me in my age 
 I! and solitude : it eases me of a troublesome weight 
 "' of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from 
 
 company that I dislike ; and it blunts the point 
 of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire 
 possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome 
 fancy, 'tis but to run to my Books ; they presently fix me to 
 them, and drive the other out of my thoughts ; and do not 
 mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of 
 other more real, natural, and lively conveniences ; they always 
 receive me with the same kindness. I never travel without 
 Books, either in peace or war ; and yet sometimes I pass over 
 several days, and sometimes months, without looking into 
 them. I will read by and by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, 
 or when I please, and time steals away without any incon- 
 venience. I rest content in this consideration, that I have 
 them by me, to divert myself with them when I am so dis- 
 posed, and to call to mind what an ease and assistance they 
 are to my life. They will not flee from me. I may -neglect 
 them, but they do not turn away. I forget their teachings, 
 and they inform me again. Patient and faithful servants of 
 a fickle master! whose changing moods are but occasions 
 for proving anew your unvarying friendship. Your affec- 
 tions, are sure and lasting. Books have very many charm- 
 ing qualities to such as know how to choose them. But 
 every good has its ill; 'tis a pleasure that is not pure and 
 clean, no more than others : it has its inconveniences, and 
 great ones too. The mind indeed is exercised by it, but the 
 body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains 
 in the mean time without action, and grows heavy and mel- 
 ancholy. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more 
 to be avoided in this my declining age, than the nourishment 
 of the mind at the body's expense. 
 
 MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. 
 
58 
 
 LONG PRIMER No. 20. SOLID. 51 LINES, 610 WORDS. 
 
 HE manufacture of paper of any description was not established 
 in any of the colonies until full fifty years after the introduction 
 of printing, the first paper mill having been erected in the vicin- 
 ity of Philadelphia by one William Rittenhousen, a native of 
 Germany, about the year 1690. The first paper mill in New 
 England was established in the town of Milton, near Boston, in 1730. In 
 1732 the following advertisement appeared in the "Rehearsal," of Boston: 
 
 " Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, Paper-maker, and Rag Merchant, 
 from the city of London, keeps at Mr. Thomas Fleet's, printer, at the Heart 
 and Crown, in Cornhill, Boston, where said Fry is ready to accommodate 
 all Gentlemen, Merchants and Tradesmen with setts of Account books after 
 the most acute manner for twenty per cent, cheaper than they can have them 
 from London. I return the Public Thanks for following the Directions of 
 my former Advertisement for gather-ing rags, and hope they will continue the 
 like Method, having received upward of Seven thousand weight already." 
 
 The early scarcity of paper in the colonies is illustrated by the following 
 curious advertisement, which appeared in the Boston "Post" in 1748: 
 
 " Choice Pennsylvania Tobacco paper is to be sold by the publisher of 
 this paper at the Heart and Crown, where may be also had the Bulls or 
 Indulgencies of the present Pope, Urban VIII. , either by the single Bull, 
 Quire or Ream, at a much cheaper rate than they can be purchased of the 
 French or Spanish priests." 
 
 The explanation of this was that several bales of " indulgencies," printed 
 upon very good paper and only on one side, had been captured by an English 
 cruiser from a Spanish vessel, and being offered at a very low price, had been 
 purchased by the Boston printer, who saw an opportunity for profit by print- 
 ing ballads or other matter for his customers upon the backs of the pontifical 
 documents in question. It is also to be noted that about this time Robert 
 Saltonstall was fined five shillings by the General Court of Massachusetts 
 for presenting a petition on a small and bad piece of paper. 
 
 In 1768 Colonel Christopher Leffingwell erected at Norwich the first paper 
 mill in the colony of Connecticut, under the promise of a bounty from the 
 General Assembly. Two years after he was accordingly awarded two-pence 
 a quire on 4020 quires of writing paper, and one penny each on 10,600 
 quires of printing paper. This mill attained a high degree of success. 
 
 In Pennsylvania the Bunkers, who settled in Lancaster county, very early 
 gave their attention to the manufacture of paper, and also set up a printing 
 press. During the Revolution, and just previous to the battle of the Brandy- 
 wine, messengers were sent to their mill for a supply of paper for cartridges. 
 The mill happening to be out of unmanufactured paper, the fraternity, who 
 held their property in common, sent back to the Continental army as a sub- 
 stitute several wagon loads of an edition of Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and 
 from the paper .supplied by the pages of this work cartridges used in the 
 battle were in part manufactured. 
 
 About the year 1770 the number of paper mills in the provinces of Penn- 
 sylvania, New Jersey and Delaware was reported to be forty, this department 
 of manufacturing industry having especially developed in the vicinity of Phila- 
 delphia, which was at that time the center of literary activity for the colonies. 
 It was a business, moreover, in which Dr. Franklin was greatly interested ; 
 and he told De Warville, a French traveller who visited America in 1788, 
 that he had himself established as many as eighteen mills. 
 
 HARPER'S MAGAZINE. 
 
59 
 
 LONG PRIMER No. n. SOLID. 51 LINES, 431 WORDS. 
 
 HE modern subscription book has 
 curiously shown the revival of an- 
 cient custom in the matter of title- 
 pages. The plausible book agent 
 who, at the proper point, opens his 
 book at the title, smooths it down 
 with his broad hand and proceeds 
 to read it, underscoring the lines 
 with his fore-finger, knows well 
 the virtue of a full, descriptive, and 
 eloquent title. To be sure he has 
 committed it to memory, the bet- 
 ter to aid his tongue, but he allows 
 his customer to enjoy with him 
 the unctuous feast which the title 
 by foretaste gives. His eye, his 
 
 finger, and his tongue travel slowly and with due emphasis down the 
 meandering stream, and the book must be a meager one indeed that 
 cannot thus spread its tempting bill of fare before the reader. Com- 
 pare with such a title-page any one of the ordinary title-pages of 
 modern fashion, and how reserved is the latter. (t Verses/' it may be, 
 at the head of the page, "A. B." in the middle, and the publisher's 
 modest imprint at the foot. 
 
 The printer who has an eve for typographic display, if a true master 
 of his art, does not take refuge in fantastically cut type, or seek vari- 
 ety by the use of many kinds of letter, but depends for the effect he 
 is to produce upon the proportions of his page and the proper break- 
 ing up of his lines. He likes, moreover, to study the color of his page, 
 and selects his type with reference to its harmony of tone and the 
 gentle emphasis which may now and then be attained by a bolder face. 
 Especially he is glad if it warrants the use of a line of rich Caxton 
 type, shining, so to speak, like a black diamond, lighting the page. 
 
 The basis of a good title-page is no doubt in the selection of type 
 and the adjustment of lines, but upon this groundwork may be built 
 very beautiful and ornate effects. The use of red ink is one of the 
 most common and effective appliances, and where the ink is a brilliant 
 carmine there is a boldness and beauty which captivate the eye, if only 
 it is properly used. It is not enough that two red lines should avoid 
 proximity ; it is important that the type used for taking the red should 
 give a clear, full impression. A choice means of securing pleasing 
 effect is in the use of a vignette, coat of arms, or monogram. Of these 
 three the vignette allies the page most closely to decorative art, and is 
 unquestionably the most attractive. It may be said that with rare ex- 
 ceptions a confined vignette is better on a title-page than a free one. 
 The use of type above and below necessarily gives the page a geomet- 
 rical form, and the introduction of a flowing design in the center is apt 
 to destroy the harmony. A head-piece has sometimes been well used, 
 especially when the lines beneath form a pendant to it, and some of 
 Whittingham's books, which are notable for the beauty of their title- 
 pages, show a deep arabesque border inclosing the entire page, which 
 is very suitable to books whose general characteristic is quaintness. 
 
 N. Y. TRIBUNE. 
 
6o 
 LONG PRIMER No. 20. LEADED. 42 LINES, 520 WORDS. 
 
 T the head of all the pleasures which offer themselves to the 
 man of liberal education may confidently be placed that de- 
 rived from books. In variety, durability, and facility of 
 attainment no other can stand in competition with it, and 
 even in intensity it is inferior to few. Imagine that we had 
 it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and 
 wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the 
 most interesting topics what an inestimable privilege should we think 
 .it! how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a well furnished 
 library we in fact possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Caesar 
 on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in 
 the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid 
 and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in 
 their best dress. We can at pleasure exclude dullness and impertinence, 
 and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. It is needless to repeat 
 the high commendations that have been bestowed on the study of letters by 
 persons who had free access to every other source of gratification. Instead 
 of quoting Cicero to you, I shall in plain terms give you the result of my 
 own experience on this subject. If domestic enjoyments have contributed 
 in the first degree to the happiness of my life (and I should be ungrateful 
 not to acknowledge that they have), the pleasures of reading have beyond 
 all question held the second place. Without books I have never been able 
 to pass a single day to my entire satisfaction : with them, no day has been 
 so dark as not to have its pleasure. Even pain and sickness have for a time 
 been charmed away by them. By the easy provision of a book in my pocket, 
 I have frequently worn through long nights and days in the most disagreeable 
 parts of my profession, with all the difference in my feelings between calm 
 content and fretful impatience. Reading may in every sense be called a 
 cheap amusement. A taste for books, indeed, may be made expensive 
 enough ; but 'that is a taste for editions, bindings, paper, and type. If you 
 are satisfied with getting at the sense of an author, in some commodious way, 
 a crown at a stall will supply your wants as well as a guinea at a shop. 
 Learn to distinguish the difference between using books and owning books. 
 Socrates once administered a sarcastic rebuke to a young man who was 
 ambitious to be considered deeply learned, and thought to gain that end by 
 boasting of his extensive and valuable collection of manuscripts. "Have 
 you read them?" asked he. 
 
 No apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary for the en- 
 joyment of reading. From the midst of bustle and business you may, in an 
 instant, by the magic of a book, plunge into scenes of remote ages and coun- 
 tries, and disengage yourself from present care and fatigue. Happy the 
 man who has found in books a peaceful retreat. 
 
 DR. JOHN AIKIN. 
 
61 
 
 LONG PRIMER No. u. LEADED. 42 LINES, 500 WORDS. 
 
 F all the amusements which can possibly be imagined for a 
 hard working man, after his daily toil, or in its intervals, 
 there is nothing like reading an entertaining book, sup- 
 posing him to have a taste for it and supposing him to 
 have the book to read. It calls for no bodily exertion, of which he 
 has had enough or too much. It relieves his home of its dullness 
 and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives him out 
 to the ale-house, to his own ruin and his family's. It transports him 
 to a livelier, and gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, 
 and while he enjoys himself there he forgets the evils of the present 
 moment. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and if the 
 book he has been reading be anything above the very idlest and light- 
 est, it gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical 
 drudgery of his e very-day occupation something he can enjoy while 
 absent, and look forward with pleasure to return to. 
 
 If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under 
 every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and 
 cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however 
 things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, and human 
 friends forsake me, it would be a taste for reading. 
 
 I recollect an anecdote told me by a late highly respected inhabitant 
 of Windsor as a fact to which he could personally testify, having oc- 
 curred in a village where he resided several years, and where he act- 
 ually was at the time it took place. The blacksmith of the village had 
 got hold of Richardson's novel of " Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded," and 
 used to read it aloud in the long summer evenings, seated on his anvil, 
 and never failed to have a large and attentive audience. It is a pretty 
 long-winded book, but their patience was fully a match for the au- 
 thor's prolixity, and they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the 
 happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine 
 together, and sets them living long and happily according to the most 
 approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great 
 shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ring- 
 ing. Now let any one say whether it is easy to estimate the amount 
 of good done in this simple case. Not to speak of the number of 
 hours agreeably and innocently spent, not to speak of the good- 
 fellowship and harmony promoted, here was a whole rustic popula- 
 tion fairly won over to the side of good charmed, and night after 
 night spell-bound within that magic circle which genius can trace so 
 effectually, and compelled to bow before that image of virtue and 
 purity which (though at a great expense of words) no one knew better 
 how to body forth than the author of that commendable work. 
 
 SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. 
 
62 
 LONG PRIMER No. 15. LEADED. 43 LINES, 587 WORDS. 
 
 HARLES LAMB writes of books which are not books. In the 
 same way there are readers who are not readers they read 
 with the eye alone, while the brain is inert. This is a class 
 far harder to deal with than that other class which has never 
 made any use of the power of reading which was hammered into them in the 
 primary school. The man who has rarely opened a book may be induced to 
 do so ; and he may be so gratified with his discovery of the pleasure and 
 profit which he finds in reading that he will never give it up. There is a 
 well-known story of a man who, after a very slight schooling, had been 
 obliged to earn his own living; he was possessed of the combination of pow- 
 ers which make for success, and he gained a large fortune in California before 
 he was forty. He built him a fine house, in which the architect put a "li- 
 brary," so the owner sent a five-thousand-dollar check East to a bookseller 
 for books to fill it. The books went to California, and the new millionaire, 
 having now time on his hands, took to reading. A few months later he 
 wrote East to the bookseller, saying that the books he had sent were thor- 
 oughly satisfactory, especially the plays of a man called Shakespeare. He 
 had enjoyed these very much. They were the real thing, and if this Shake- 
 speare should ever write anything more, please forward it to him at once by 
 express, C. O. D. This story, which I have seen cited as characteristic 
 stupidity on the part of a self-made man, strikes me, on the contrary, as 
 highly to his credit. That he, without any literary culture whatever, should 
 be able to appreciate Shakespeare's work, in spite of the archaisms and other 
 things which tend to veil its beauty and its strength from us, is as |ood proof 
 of his native intelligence as one could wish. If that man had spent his spare 
 time reading cheap fiction, in all probability he would never have made his 
 fortune ; and of a certainty he would never have been able to enjoy Shake- 
 speare if his appreciation of what is good had been lowered by trash. 
 
 Those who do not read can best be got to read by giving them something 
 which will interest them sufficiently to make them want to read it through 
 when they have once begun. And what will interest a man depends alto- 
 gether on the man. In literature, as in dietetics, what is one man's meat 
 is another man's poison. You cannot cure a boy of reading "The Bold 
 Brigand of Dead Gulch" by giving him "The Student's Hume" one of 
 the driest books which ever made a boy thirsty or any of the ordinary old 
 fashioned text-books of history. But you might get him to give up "Lone- 
 eyed Jim, the Boy Scout," to read one of Mayne Reid's stories; and from 
 those the transition is easy to the sea-tales of Cooper and Marryat. 
 
 The one essential thing to do, when you are trying to change a man who 
 does not read into a man who does read, is to put yourself in his place. 
 What is his business ? What are his tastes ? What are his surroundings ? 
 Study the man or the woman or the child, and put before him or her the 
 book he or she is most likely to begin, and, having begun, most likely to finish. 
 
 ARTHUR PENN. 
 
63 
 LONG PRIMER LIGHT FACE. LEADED. 43 LINES, 383 WORDS. 
 
 T last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the books 
 that lay on the window shelf, and she half 
 forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly 
 the leaves of the "Portrait Gallery," but she 
 soon pushed this aside to examine the little row of 
 books tied together with string: " Beauties of the 
 Spectator," "Rasselas," "Economy of Human Life," 
 "Gregory's Letters" she knew the sort of matter 
 that was inside all these ; the "Christian Year" that 
 seemed to be a hymn-book, and she laid it down 
 again; but "Thomas & Kempis"? the name had 
 come across her in her reading, and she felt the sat- 
 isfaction, which every one knows, of getting some 
 ideas .to attach to a name that strays solitary in the 
 memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book 
 with some curiosity: it had the corners turned 
 clown in many places, and some hand, now forever 
 quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and- 
 ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie 
 turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet 
 hand pointed: "Know that the love of thyself doth 
 hurt thee more than anything in the world. . . If 
 thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or 
 there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou 
 shalt never be quiet nor free from care: for in 
 every thing somewhat will be wanting, and in 
 every place there will be some that will cross thee. . . 
 Both above and below, which way soever thou dost 
 turn thee, every where thoLi shalt find the Cross: 
 and every where of necessity thou must have pa- 
 tience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy 
 an everlasting crown." A strange thrill of awe passed 
 through Maggie while she read, as if she had been 
 awakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, 
 telling of beings whose souls had been astir while 
 hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown 
 mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to 
 point, hardly conscious that she -was reading seem- 
 ing rather to listen while a low voice said: "I have 
 often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, 
 Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy 
 much inward peace. Then shall immoderate fear 
 leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT, " Mill on the Floss." 
 
6 4 
 ELZEVIR BODY 10. LEADED. 39 LINES, 383 WORDS. 
 
 ]HE actual interest of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's article on books in the 
 "Nineteenth Century" is not 
 perhaps in its mechanical dis- 
 cussion of the housing of them, 
 but in what he says of books 
 themselves. At times he speaks 
 of books with something of the 
 enthusiasm of the true collector, 
 or if it be not really enthusiasm 
 it sounds like sympathy. But it 
 is, nevertheless, always open to 
 doubt whether he cares very 
 much for books otherwise than for the purposes of reading. There is 
 not much in this article, or in any writing of his which I recall to mind, 
 to show that he possesses any special knowledge of books from the 
 collector's point of view. Curiosities like the diamond editions of the 
 late Mr. Pickering or the miniature prayer-books of Mr. Froude amuse 
 him. Nay, he makes a remark on one of them which almost savors 
 of humor. Pickering's Dante, says Mr. Gladstone, weighs less than 
 a number of "The Times." With these exceptions, his thirteen 
 pages might have been written by one to whom books are precious 
 only for what they contain, and not for their rarity, or for their beauty, 
 or for having belonged to famous owners, or for being original edi- 
 tions, or for the printer's mark, or for any other of the many reasons 
 which make many volumes dear to the true lover of books, in addi- 
 tion to, and sometimes independently of, their literary worth. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is a utilitarian, but he never could have regarded 
 books as Darwin did. There is a horrible passage in one of Darwin's 
 letters, in which he describes himself as tearing in two a volume which 
 he found inconveniently heavy. The book was not rent asunder with 
 any thought of its parts being recruited or bound ; it was left in frag- 
 ments, its dismemberment was forever, and there was no instigating 
 circumstance in the barbarity of the act of the great naturalist. Yet 
 even Mr. Gladstone is capable of proposing to pack his books upon 
 shelves constructed as to allow neither light nor air. He says "twelve 
 inches is a fair and liberal depth for octavos," and he allows but nine 
 inches for the average height of 8vo shelving. This is to construct, 
 not a library, nor even a warehouse for books, but a prison. 
 
 G. W. SMALLEY, in " New-York Tribune." 
 
65 
 LONG PRIMER EXPANDED. TREBLE LEADED. 31 LINES, 236 WORDS. 
 
 HILE I am with ray 
 books I enjoy the best 
 solitary company in the 
 world. In this particu- 
 lar chiefly they excel all 
 other company, that in study I am sure to 
 converse with none but wise men ; but it 
 is impossible abroad for me to avoid the so- 
 ciety of fools. Here, without traveling so far 
 as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of 
 those times, the learnedest philosophers, the 
 wisest counselors, the greatest generals, and 
 make them serviceable to me. I can make 
 bold with the best jewels they have in their 
 treasury with the same freedom that the 
 Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, 
 without suspicion of felony, make use of 
 them as mine own. I can here, without 
 trespassing, go into their vineyards, and 
 not only eat my fill of their grapes for my 
 pleasure, but put up as much as I will in 
 my vessel, and store it for my profit. Lord, 
 teach me so to study other men's works as 
 not to neglect mine own; and so to study 
 thy TV^ord, which is thy work, that it may 
 be my candle to work by. Take me off from 
 the curiosity of knowing only to know ; from 
 the vanity of knowing only to be known ; 
 and from the folly of pretending to know 
 more than I do know : and let it be my wis- 
 dom to know thee who art life eternal. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM WALLER. 
 
66 
 LONG PRIMER No. 20. DOUBLE LEADED. 36 LINES, 456 WORDS. 
 
 TljfHE inhabitants of the earth in remote times were divided 
 I into small states or societies, often at enmity among them- 
 1 1 selves, and whose thoughts and interests were confined 
 ; within their own narrow territories. In succeeding ages 
 '.' * men joined themselves into larger communities, as when 
 
 the English heptarchy became united, or later when England, Scotland 
 and Ireland became one; but still distant kingdoms and quarters of the 
 world were of no interest to them, and often were totally unknown. Now, 
 however, a man feels that he is a member of one vast civilized society which 
 covers the face of the earth, and no part of the earth is indifferent to him. 
 Even a journeyman mechanic who is honest, sober, and intelligent may 
 say with truth and exultation : " I am lodged in a house that affords me con- 
 veniences and comforts which some centuries ago even a king could not 
 command. Ships are crossing the seas in every direction to bring to me 
 what is useful from all parts of the earth ; in China men are gathering the 
 tea leaf for me ; in the West India Islands and elsewhere they are preparing 
 my sugar and my coffee ; in the South they are cultivating cotton for me ; 
 elsewhere they are shearing the sheep to give me abundance of warm cloth- 
 ing ; at home powerful steam engines are spinning and weaving for me, and 
 making cutlery, and pumping the mines that minerals useful to me may be 
 procured. My patrimony was small, yet I have railway trains running day 
 and night on all the roads to carry my correspondence and to bring the coal 
 for my winter fire ; nay, I have protecting fleets and armies around my happy 
 country, to render secure my enjoyments and repose. Then I have editors 
 and printers, who daily send me an account of what is going on throughout 
 the world, among these people who serve me. And in a corner of my 
 house I have books the miracle of all my possessions, more wonderful than 
 the wishing-cap of the Arabian tales, for they transport me instantly, not 
 only to all places, but to all times. By my books I can conjure up before 
 me to a momentary existence many of the great and good men of past ages, 
 and for my individual satisfaction they seem to act again the most renowned 
 of their achievements ; the orators declaim for me, the historians recite, the 
 poets sing." This picture is not overcharged, and might be much extended ; 
 such being the goodness and providence which devised this world, that each 
 individual of the civilized millions that cover it, if his conduct be prudent, 
 may have nearly the same happiness as if he were the single lord of all. 
 
 DR. ARNOTT. 
 
6 7 
 LONG PRIMER No. n. DOUBLE LEADED. 36 LINES, 447 WORDS. 
 
 DO not know whether it has been sufficiently brought 
 home to you that there are two kinds of books. When 
 a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most de- 
 partments of books, in all books, if you take it in a 
 wide sense, he will find that there is a division into 
 good books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book and a 
 bad kind of book. I am not to assume that you are unacquainted, or 
 ill-acquainted, with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is 
 becoming a very important consideration in our day. And we have 
 to cast aside altogether the idea people have, that if they are reading 
 any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing 
 rather better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that in ques- 
 tion; I even venture to deny that. It would be much safer and better 
 for many a reader, that he had no concern with books at all. There 
 is a number, a frightfully increasing number, of books that are decid- 
 edly, to the readers of them, not useful. But an ingenious reader will 
 learn, also, that a certain number of books were written by a supremely 
 noble kind of people; not a very great number of books, but still a 
 number fit to occupy all your reading industry, do adhere more or less 
 to that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere 
 else, I conceive that books are like men's souls 1 divided into sheep 
 and goats. Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward; 
 calculated, I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching in for- 
 warding the teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful multitude, 
 are going down, down; doing ever the more and the wider and the 
 wilder mischief. Keep a strict eye on that latter class of books, my 
 young friends. Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more 
 difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your 
 reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of 
 things you have a real interest in, a real, not an imaginary, and 
 which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. The most 
 unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, 
 who has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go 
 into it with all his might. For work is the grand cure of all the mal- 
 adies and miseries that ever beset mankind honest work, which you 
 intend getting done. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
68 
 
 BOURGEOIS No. 20. SOLID. 57 LINES, 654 WORDS. 
 
 E form judgments of men from little 
 things about their houses, of which 
 the owner, perhaps, never thinks. 
 In earlier years when traveling in 
 the West) where taverns were very 
 scarce, and in some places indeed 
 unknown, and every settler's house 
 was a house of entertainment, it 
 was a matter of some importance 
 and experience to select where you 
 should put up. And we always 
 looked for flowers. If there were 
 no trees for shade, no bright patch 
 of flowers in the yard, we became 
 suspicious of the place. But no 
 matter how rude the cabin, or how 
 rough the surroundings, if we saw 
 that the window held a little trough 
 for flowers, and that some vines 
 twined about strings let down from 
 the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log 
 cabin. In a new country, where the people have to tug for a living, no one will 
 take the trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty strong; and this 
 taste, blossoming out of uncultivated people, is like a clump of harebells growing 
 out of the seams of a rock. We were very seldom misled. Flowers came to 
 signify kind people, clean beds, and good bread. 
 
 But in other states of society other signs are more significant. Flowers about 
 a rich man's house may signify only that he has a good gardener, and does what 
 he sees them do. But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want 
 them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in slender means we find that he con- 
 tents himself with cheap carpets and very plain furniture in order that he may 
 purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furni- 
 ture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest 
 row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement 
 than the most elaborate etagere or sideboard. Give us a house furnished with 
 books rather than furniture. Both if you can, but books at any rate! To spend 
 several days in a friend's house, and hunger for something to read, while you are 
 treading on costly carpets, and sitting on luxuriant chairs, and sleeping upon 
 down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind. 
 Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, 
 and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything 
 but what the soul needs? We know of many and many a rich man's house, 
 where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English Classics. A few 
 garish Annuals on the table, a few pictorial monstrosities, together with the stock 
 religious books of his "persuasion," and that is all! No poets, no essayists, no 
 historians, no travels or biographies, no select fiction or curious legendary lore. 
 But the wall paper cost three dollars a roll, and the carpet cost four dollars a yard ! 
 Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without 
 books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his chil- 
 dren without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. 
 It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them ! Children learn to read by being 
 in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows 
 upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is a warrant against the 
 inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us congratulate the poor that, in 
 our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes 
 to his library for the price which his tobacco and his beer would cost him. A 
 little library growing larger every year is an honorable part of a man's history. 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
6 9 
 BOURGEOIS No. u. SOLID. 57 LINES, 660 WORDS. 
 
 GREAT library cannot be constructed it is the 
 growth of ages. You may buy books at any time 
 with money, but you cannot make a library like one 
 that has been a century or two a-growing, though 
 you had the whole national debt to do it with. I 
 remember once how an extensive publisher, speak- 
 ing of the rapid strides which literature had made 
 of late years, and referring to a certain old public 
 library ? celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, 
 the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated 
 how he had himself freighted for exportation, 
 within the past month, as many books as that 
 whole library consisted of. This was likely enough 
 to be true, but the two collections were very dif- 
 ferent from each other. The cargoes of books were probably thousands of 
 copies of some few popular selling works. They might be a powerful illus- 
 tration of the diffusion of knowledge, but what they were compared with 
 was its concentration. Had all the paper of which these cargoes consisted 
 been bank-notes they would not have enabled their owner to duplicate the 
 old library, rich in the fathers, the civilians, and medieval chroniclers. 
 
 This impossibility of improvising libraries is really an important and curi- 
 ous thing; and since it is apt to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buy- 
 ing books, in quantities generally far beyond the available means of any 
 ordinary buyer, it seems worthy of some special consideration. A man who 
 sets out to form a library will go on swimmingly for a short way. He will 
 easily get Tennyson's Poems, Macaulay's and Alison's histories, the Ency- 
 clopaedia Britannica, Buckle on Civilization all the books "in print," as it 
 is termed. Nay, he will find no difficulty in procuring copies of others which 
 may not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or of the retailer of new 
 books. Of Voltaire's works a little library in itself he will get a copy at 
 his call in London, if he has not set his mind on some special edition. So of 
 Scott's edition of Swift or Dry den, Croker's edition of Bos well's Johnson, 
 and the like. One can scarcely suppose a juncture in which any of these 
 cannot be found through the electric chain of communication established by 
 the book-trade. Of Gibbon's and Hume's histories, Jeremy Taylor's works, 
 Bossuet's Universal History, and the like, copies abound everywhere. Go 
 back a little and ask for Rennet's Collection of the Historians, Echard's His- 
 tory, Bayle Moreri, or Father Daniel's History of France; you cannot be so 
 certain of immediately obtaining your object, but you will get the book in 
 the end no doubt about that. They are not yet excessively rare. 
 
 Everything has its caprices, and there are some books which might be ex- 
 pected to be equally shy, but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality, are as 
 plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are Famianus Strada's History 
 of the Dutch War of Independence one of the most brilliant works ever writ- 
 ten, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan's. There is Buchanan's own 
 history, very common even in the shape of the early Scotch edition of Ar- 
 buthnot's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis, and Raynal's Philo- 
 sophical History of the East and West Indies, without which no book-stall is 
 to be considered complete, and which seem to be possessed of a supernatural 
 power of resistance to the elements, since, month after month, in fair weather 
 or foul, they are to be seen at their posts dry or dripping. 
 
 So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects some five thousand volumes 
 or so of select works. If he is miscellaneous in his tastes, he may get on pretty 
 comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and then his troubles will arise. And 
 woe betide him if he sets his heart upon obtaining the original editions of 
 rare prints, for after the search of a lifetime he may go to his grave a disap- 
 pointed man. 
 
70 
 BOURGEOIS No. 20. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 50 LINES, 688 WORDS. 
 
 SAY first we have despised literature. What do we, as a 
 nation, care about books? How much do you think we 
 spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as com- 
 pared with what we spend on our, horses ? If a man spends 
 lavishly on his library, you call him mad a biblio-maniac. 
 But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men 
 ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not 
 hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to 
 go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the 
 United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch as compared with the contents 
 of its wine cellars ? What position would its expenditure on literature take as 
 compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating ? We talk of food for the 
 mind, as of food for the body : now a good book contains such food inexhaust- 
 ibly ; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most 
 people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large 
 turbot for it ! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs 
 and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I 
 think, in the end than most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such 
 trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to 
 us if it has been won by work or economy ; and if public libraries were half as 
 costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even 
 foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as 
 well as in munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is 
 making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying. 
 No book is worth anything which is not worth much ; nor is it serviceable until it 
 has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again ; and marked, so that you 
 can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he 
 needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. 
 Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in 
 a good book ; and the family must be poor indeed which once in their lives can- 
 not, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves 
 a rich and great nation, and yet we are filthy enough and foolish enough to 
 thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries ! 
 
 Nevertheless I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will 
 be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them ; the 
 same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared 
 for that national series in the most perfect way possible ; their text printed all on 
 leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in 
 the hand, beautiful and strong, and thorough as examples of binder's work ; and 
 that these libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of 
 the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness. 
 I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, and for natural history 
 galleries, and for many precious, many, it seems to me, needful, things ; but 
 this book plan is the easiest and the needfulest, and would prove a considerable 
 tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of 
 late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You 
 have got its corn laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws estab- 
 lished for it, dealing in a better bread bread made of that old enchanted 
 Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors ; doors, not of robbers', but of 
 Kings' Treasuries. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
BOURGEOIS No. u. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 50 LINES, 637 WORDS. 
 
 I 
 
 OR the knowledge that comes from books I would claim no 
 more than it is fairly entitled to. I am well aware that 
 there is no inevitable connection between intellectual cul- 
 tivation, on the one hand, and individual virtue or social 
 well-being, on the other. " The tree of knowledge is not 
 the tree of life." I admit that genius and learning are 
 sometimes found in combination with gross vices, and not 
 I unfrequently with contemptible weaknesses; and that a 
 community at once cultivated and corrupt is no impossible monster. But it 
 is no overstatement to say that, other things being equal, the man who has 
 the greatest amount of intellectual resources is in the least danger from infe- 
 rior temptations if for no other reason, because lie has fewer idle moments. 
 The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armor 
 of the soul ; and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remem- 
 ber a satirical poem in which the devil is represented as fishing for men, and 
 adapting his baits to the taste and temperament of his prey j but the idler 
 pleased him most, he said, because he bit the naked hook. To a young man 
 away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great city, the hours of peril are 
 those between sunset and bed- time ; for the moon and the stars see more of 
 evil in a single hour than the sun in his whole day's circuit. The poet's vis- 
 ions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. It brings the 
 wanderer to his home, the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. 
 But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless 
 city, and stands "homeless among a thousand homes," the approach of even- 
 ing brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes 
 down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best 
 impulses become a snare to him ; and he is led astray because he is social, af- 
 fectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus 
 circumstanced who reads these lines, let me inform you that books are the 
 friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless. 
 A taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible society, and 
 enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and 
 charm you by their wit j who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when 
 weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at all times. 
 
 In books, be it remembered, we have the best products of the best minds. 
 We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an evening with 
 Shakespeare or Bacon, were such a thing possible. But, were we admitted 
 to the presence of one of these illustrious men, we might find him touched 
 with infirmity or oppressed with weariness, or darkened with the shadow of 
 a recent trouble, or absorbed by intrusive and tyrannous thoughts. To us 
 the oracle might be dumb, and the light eclipsed. But when we take down 
 one of these volumes we run no such risk. Here we have their best thoughts 
 embalmed in their best words. Here we find the growth of the choicest sea- 
 sons of the mind, when mortal cares were forgotten, and mortal weaknesses 
 were subdued, and the soul, stripped of its vanities and passions, gave forth 
 its highest emanations of truth and beauty. We may be sure that Shake- 
 speare never out-talked his Hamlet, nor Bacon his Essays. 
 
 Great writers are indeed best known through their books. How very little, 
 for instance, do we know of the life of Shakespeare ; but how much do we 
 know of him ! 
 
 GEORGE S. HILLARD. 
 
72 
 BOURGEOIS No. 20. LEADED. 47 LINES, 623 WORDS. 
 
 SAY, then, that books, taken indiscriminately, are no cure to 
 the diseases and afflictions of the mind. There is a world of 
 science necessary in the taking them. I have known some 
 people in great sorrow fly to a novel, -or the last light book in 
 fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague ! 
 Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am 
 told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to 
 him. Ah ! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. In a great 
 grief like that, you cannot tickle and divert the mind ; you must wrench it away, 
 abstract, absorb bury it in an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth. Therefore, for 
 the irremediable sorrows of middle life and old age, I recommend a strict chronic 
 course of science and hard reasoning counter-irritation. Bring the brain to 
 act upon the heart ! If science is too much against the grain (for we have not 
 all got mathematical heads), something in the reach of the humblest under- 
 standing, but sufficiently searching to the highest a new language Greek, 
 Arabic, Scandinavian, Chinese, or Welsh! For the loss of fortune the dose 
 should be applied less directly to the understanding I would administer some- 
 thing elegant and cordial. For, as the heart is crushed and lacerated by a loss 
 in the affections, so it is rather the head that aches and suffers by the loss of 
 money. Here we find the higher class of poets a very valuable remedy. For 
 observe that poets of the grander and more comprehensive kind of genius have 
 in them two separate men, quite distinct from each other the imaginative 
 man, and the practical, circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture of these 
 that suits diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half practical. If you take 
 them gently and quietly, they will not, like your mere philosopher, your unreason- 
 able stoic, tell you that you have lost nothing; but they will insensibly steal you 
 out of this world, with its losses and crosses, and slip you into another world, 
 before you know where you are ! a world where you are just as welcome, though 
 you carry no more earth of your lost acres with you than covers the sole of your 
 shoe. Then, for hypochondria and satiety, what is better than a brisk, alterative 
 course of travels especially early, qut-of-the-way, marvelous, legendary travels ! 
 How they freshen up the spirits ! How they take you out of the humdrum, yawn- 
 ing state you are in. Then, for that vice of the mind which I call sectarianism 
 not in the religious sense of the word, but little, narrow prejudices, that make 
 you hate your next-door neighbor because he has his eggs roasted when you have 
 yours boiled; and gossiping and prying into people's affairs, and backbiting, and 
 thinking heaven and earth are coming together, if some broom touch the cobweb 
 that you have let grow over the window-sill of your brains what like a large 
 and generous, mildly aperient course of history ! How it clears away all the 
 fumes of the head ! better than the hellebore with which the old leeches of the 
 middle ages purged the cerebellum. There, amidst all that great whirl and 
 sturmbad, as the Germans say, of kingdoms and empires, and races and ages, 
 how your mind enlarges beyond that little, feverish animosity to John Styles ; or 
 that unfortunate prepossession of yours, that all the world is interested in your 
 grievances against Tom Stokes and his wife ! 
 
 " How little a space one sorrow really makes in life; and how triumphantly 
 the life sails on beyond it ! " 
 
 LORD LYTTON (BULWER), "The Caxtons." 
 
73 
 
 BOURGEOIS No. n. LEADED. 47 LINKS, 572 WORDS. 
 
 HEN work is offered by an entire stranger, without set- 
 tled or known place of business, prepayment should be 
 requested. This is a delicate duty, but it may be done 
 courteously, and without giving offense. An honest and 
 reasonable customer will readily see the necessity of the 
 rule, and will as readily comply with it. If the necessary 
 precaution is omitted, the office must look for many losses. 
 Credit is frequently requested. This is an application 
 that no clerk has a right to entertain, even from persons of known responsi- 
 bility. In all cases such a request should be referred to the proprietor or 
 manager for his decision. It is a matter in which there is much conflicting 
 local usage, and for which no positive rules can be given. There are cases 
 in which credit is beneficial to both parties, but upon most applications it 
 should be declined. The apparent value of printed work, and the disposition 
 to pay for it, is never greater than it is on its first receipt. It will be found 
 judicious to avoid all running accounts, and to secure at least monthly settle- 
 ments with all customers. Cash should be the rule j credit the exception . 
 
 To persons of an enthusiastic and speculative temperament, printing prom- 
 ises great advantages in the prosecution of business. Their proclivity to run 
 in debt should not be encouraged by any printer. If the applicant has not 
 the money to hazard in an advertising experiment, it is more than probable 
 that he never will earn it. There are certain kinds of printing for which 
 credit should never be given. All kinds of election work, the publishing of 
 a newspaper or a book, or the establishment of an invention or patent med- 
 icine, are as full of hazard as any form of gambling. The party intending 
 to reap the reward should take the sole risk, and pay any loss. 
 
 Probably no class of tradesmen suffer more severely from the failure of 
 adventurers than printers. A thrifty printer, who wishes to maintain his 
 own credit, must be inexorable in refusing credit to all new and unendorsed 
 publishing enterprises. Work should stop when pay stops. Cases will occur 
 where the application of such a rigorous rule will appear both harsh and 
 injudicious. But it is the experience of all old printers, that it is much the 
 wiser course to lose an apparently valuable customer and profitable work, 
 rather than take risk with him. To break friendly business relations on 
 grounds of distrust with an estimable man is always an unpleasant duty, and 
 one that will require some nerve on the part of the young printer, especially 
 if the customer is already somewhat in debt, and refusal to trust him further 
 is probably equivalent to a certain loss of the indebtedness that has been 
 already incurred. This disagreeable task can be materially lightened by 
 advising the customer before the work is accepted, that under no circum- 
 stances can there be any credit; that a failure to make weekly payments 
 from any cause whatever will stop the work. A customer who declines to 
 accede to such arrangements is not desirable. When credit is given, it should 
 be given with a limit as to amount, but fully and heartily in form. Pay no 
 attention to evasive or conditional promises. Accept no equivocation or 
 division of responsibility. If the person who is expected to pay the bill will 
 not give a positive order, decline the work. 
 
74 
 BREVIER No. 20. SOLID. 64 LINES, ion WORDS. 
 
 HERE came into my hands by chance the other day a copy of the first edition 
 of the works of John Hookham Frere, published by Mr. B. M. Picker- 
 ing, son of that William Pickering whose name has long been honored 
 by lovers of fine books. This copy and I hope not to scare off the gen- 
 eral reader by the phrase is on large paper, and of such copies only 25 
 in all were printed. Of those on ordinary paper the whole number, if I 
 recollect rightly, did not exceed 750. The book became a scarce one soon 
 after its publication, for when it went out of print copies filtered back into 
 the market very slowly. Both the Pickerings have shown courage in giving to the public 
 editions of great writers whom other publishers would not touch. The public prove 
 sometimes grateful and sometimes ungrateful. In other words, these issues were not al- 
 ways profitable, but scholars and literary men and bibliophiles of all grades reaped the 
 benefit of Mr. Pickering's enterprise. In the end, I may add, the public has been made 
 to pay handsomely. Many books which the late Mr. Pickering sold off at a fourth of the 
 cost have of late years been bringing more than four times their published price. It is a 
 pity that this appreciation of them came too late to be of help to him. In the case of Mr. 
 Frere's works, the demand proved to be so unexpectedly great that a second edition was 
 finally called for. This has been printed- in a style slightly less luxurious than the first, 
 but is, in point of elegance, superior to most of the books of the day. 
 
 As there is still here and there a publisher who aims at excellence in book-making, he 
 will perhaps allow me to suggest to him that he could not do better than examine with 
 some care the work that has been done on the large paper Frere of the first edition. The 
 paper is hand-made, and of a texture just suited to take a good impression: not too hard 
 in surface, as the best Whatman paper sometimes is ; not too rough, as 'some of the best 
 of the Van Gelder and other Dutch papers are. It certainly would not answer for ordi- 
 nary books, being too costly, too stiff for easy folding, and otherwise ill-adapted to the 
 hurried processes of book-binding by machinery. I notice that in this copy, though it is 
 not bound in the proper sense of the word, but has been put into cloth boards, the binder 
 has taken the precaution to cut up every alternate leaf, with the gratifying result that no 
 creases are to be seen. The necessity for all this care is rather an advantage than other- 
 wise, for excellence in no art can be attained without difficulties to overcome. And in 
 treating of book-making as an art, what we want to know is, not the best average work 
 that can be done, but the best absolutely. There will be no danger of its influence on the 
 habits of the trade proving too great. The paper is white, with just the suggestion of a 
 yellowish tint to keep it from being glaring by no means what American publishers at 
 one time were so fond of under the name of tinted paper, which was of a positive color, 
 and almost worse than the blue tint which is so common a fault in the Dutch papers. 
 
 A practical printer would be the first to admire the typography of the book. Its various 
 contents required a great variety of type. More than a dozen different sorts of letter may 
 be counted sometimes on a single page, yet there is an evenness of appearance throughout 
 which is the best proof of good taste in selection. The face of the type is almost always 
 thin, and the whole of it is at once elegant and clear. The vignettes, initial letters, fleurons 
 and culs-de-lampe are carefully designed and artistic. The press-work has been done 
 with considerable care. It is too seldom that one sees in a modern book so distinct an 
 impression, or a more exact register. And the ink is black not quite uniformly so, but 
 as a rule, and has a real luster. This is the greater merit, because in no particular does 
 modern book-making even the best more commonly fail. In cheap books it must be 
 expected to fail, for good ink fetches a good price. This is the weak point of the modern 
 French printers. Maine's, otherwise fine series of French classics offers you a page which 
 is positively weak from the paleness of the ink. Some of Jouaust's work has the same 
 fault; so has Scheuring's and Claye's, though an exception in favor of the latter must be 
 made in the case of the Bida Gospels which he printed for Messrs. Hachette. It must be 
 said that Whittingham is capable, like other mortals, of using gray ink, and that ink may 
 be black without being brilliant. The Chiswick press, like all others, must do cheap work 
 for profit, and occasional good work for the glory of the printer's art. In accuracy it 
 leaves something to be desired. The page of errata at the end of the first volume shows 
 careless proof-reading. The most beautiful books have not always been the most accu- 
 rate. Many of the incunabula swarm with errors ; the best sixteenth century books, the 
 best Aldines excepted, are far from immaculate ; the Elzevirs in the next age are of every 
 degree of merit ; and when we get down to Bodoni we find in a single volume the extreme 
 of typographical luxury combined with scandalous carelessness. If this is the practical 
 age we proclaim it to be, how happens it we make so little progress in an art which in no 
 other age was ever used so extensively as now? Our mechanical improvements have been 
 marvelous, but our real gains are limited to speed and cheapness of production. 
 
 G. W. SMAIXEY, in "New -York Tribune." 
 
75 
 
 BREVIER No. n. SOLID. 64 LINES, 913 WORDS. 
 
 HERE is a practice among publishers which, at first blush, seems an 
 insult offered to good literature. When sending out a traveler to 
 make sales to booksellers of some forthcoming book, they will fre- 
 quently provide him, not with a copy of the book itself, but with a 
 dummy made up of blank paper, trimly clad in the cloth case which 
 is finally to hold the book, duly stamped and lettered in black and 
 gold, black alone, or gold alone, or simply stamped in blind. By this 
 sample he is to recommend the book to the dealer, and on this to take his orders. 
 It is better to find the rationale of this custom than to denounce it as a slight put 
 upon literature. The cover sells the book to the dealer, because the dealer himself 
 sells the book to his customer in turn very largely by means of its outside dress. 
 Many a book which has doggedly refused to move from the bookseller's shelf has 
 refused in the most lively manner to stay there when newly set out in some jaunty 
 fashion of bookbinding. The book agent, too, lets his victim feast his eyes on the 
 fool's gold that displays itself upon the broad expanse of the subscription book, 
 knowing the charm that lies in it. 
 
 It is not to be expected that the bookbinders and the public will ever keep very 
 far apart in their taste, but it is nevertheless possible to bind books in accordance 
 with sound taste, and to catch the public eye also. Moreover, it only needs a little 
 courage on the part of a publisher to make him a reformer in good taste, in a mod- 
 est way, and there will always be a long suffering minority who will hail with re- 
 joicing any recognition of their very reserved rights. The first consideration and 
 the last is that every book should have a cover which bears some relation to the 
 contents of the book. A cook book and a theological treatise ought not to make 
 the same appeal to the eye. No one who stops to think would deny this proposi- 
 tion. But there are more subtle distinctions which are constantly overlooked. A 
 book in pure literature should not be mistaken for a book in science, yet any pre- 
 vailing fashion, as for instance that of gold lettering and black arabesque printing, 
 will probably display itself in both cases without discrimination. 
 
 To begin at the bottom, the board used in cloth covers should be graded in its 
 thickness according to the weight of the book which it has to sustain ; it is a piece 
 of deception and of vulgarity to put heavy boards with beveled edges upon thin 
 books. It is done to make them look more substantial, and so warrant a higher 
 price. The cloth again is likely to run upon some fancy pattern or color, which is 
 merely novel and not in itself good. The pattern and color should be determined 
 by two considerations, the nature of the book and the character of the decoration 
 to be used on this ground. A dark brown is suited to historical works, and in gen- 
 eral to books of dignity ; blue might fairly be used for romance and poetry, but, 
 unfortunately, blue is not in favor, because it is said to fade ; this may be true of 
 the lighter shades, but we have seen smooth blue cloth-bound books that look as 
 delightful to the eye as they did years ago. Red, especially in its deeper tones, 
 suits scientific and military books and books relating to the mechanic arts. Black 
 the human mind instinctively refers to theology, and it is curious to see how the 
 books which of late years have undertaken to make theology popular have invari- 
 ably dressed themselves in the more sociable brown cloth. White, or the lightest 
 shades of yellow, belongs to the fine arts, but for the lightest of gay reading it may 
 well be used if covered boldly with a black stamp that only lets the light through 
 here and there. Novels and easy-going literature generally should be allowed the 
 buffs and grays, while travel and natural history claim green. The mineral colors 
 as a rule are detestable. We hold that the grain of the cloth should obey the gen- 
 eral law, that the daintier the book the smoother it should be, books that require a 
 firmer grasp being entitled to rough grain. 
 
 When it comes to the matter of lettering and decoration it is more difficult to lay 
 down specific rules. Yet here also there are certain canons which ought not to be 
 disregarded. The lettering on our books is almost always bad. A condensed let- 
 ter is too much used, owing to the endeavor to make narrow backs carry broad 
 titles. We would simplify the titles in the first place, then use as round a letter 
 as possible, and avoid imitation of fancy types. When a title, however, forms part 
 of some general scheme of decoration, the artist ought to make the lettering also 
 picturesque. The decoration of a book cover most certainly ought to be intrusted 
 to a special artist, and that artist ought not to be the die-sinker, but a workman in 
 the bindery. The greatest evil we have to contend against is the inveterate habit 
 of our Western eye, when not cultivated, to call for formal symmetry. It is ne- 
 cessary now, when a good design is to be procured, to go outside of the craft. 
 
 NEW-YORK TRIBUNE. 
 
7 6 
 
 BREVIER No. 20. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 55 LINES, 834 WORDS. 
 
 OOKS are our household gods ; and we cannot prize them too highly. 
 They are the only gods in all the mythologies that are ever beautiful and 
 unchangeable; for they betray no man, and love their lovers. I confess 
 myself an idolator of this literary religion, and am grateful for the blessed 
 ministry of books. It is a kind of heathenism which needs no missionary 
 funds, no Bible even, to abolish it; for the Bible itself caps the peak of 
 this new Olympus, and crowns it with sublimity and glory. Amongst the many things 
 we have to be thankful for, as the result of modern discoveries, surely this of printed 
 books is the highest of all; and I, for one, am so sensible of its merits that I never think 
 of the name of Gutenberg without feelings of veneration and homage. 
 
 I no longer wonder, with this and other instances before me, why in the old days of 
 reverence and worship the saints and benefactors of mankind were exalted into a kind of 
 demi-gods, and had worship rendered to their tombs and memories; for this is the most 
 natural, as well as the most touching, of all human generosities, and springs from the 
 profoundest depths of man's nature. Who does not love John Gutenberg ? the man 
 that with his leaden types has made the in-visible thoughts and imaginations of the soul 
 visible and readable to all and by all, and secured for the worthy a double immortality? 
 The birth of this person was an era in the world's history second to none save that of the 
 Advent of Christ. The dawn of printing was the outburst of a new revelation, which, in 
 its ultimate unfoldings and consequences, are alike inconceivable and immeasurable. 
 
 I sometimes amuse myself by comparing the condition of the people before the time of 
 Gutenberg with their present condition, that I may fix the idea of the value and blessed- 
 ness of books more vividly in my mind. It is an occupation not without profit, and 
 makes me grateful and contented with my lot. In these reading days one can hardly con- 
 ceive how our good forefathers managed to kill their superfluous time, or how at least they 
 could be satisfied to kill it as they did. A life without books, when we have said all we 
 can about the honor and nobility of labor, would be something like Heaven without God 
 scarcely to be endured by an immortal nature. And yet this was the condition of things 
 before Gutenburg made his far-sounding metallic tongues, which reach through all the 
 ages that have since passed away, and make us glad with their eloquence. 
 
 Formerly the ecclesiastics monopolized the literature of the world ; they were indeed in 
 many cases the authors and transcribers of books, and we are indebted to them for the 
 preservation of the old learning. Now every mechanic is the possessor of a library, and 
 may have Plato and Socrates, as well as Chaucer and the bards, for his companions. I 
 call this a heavenly privilege, and the greatest of all known miracles, notwithstanding it 
 is so cheap and common. Plato died above two thousand years ago, yet in these printed 
 books he lives and speaks forever. There is no death to thought, which, though it may 
 never be imprisoned in lettered language, has nevertheless an existence and propagative 
 vitality as soon as it is uttered, and endures from generation to generation, to the very 
 end of the world. I think we should all of us be grateful for books: they are our best 
 friends and most faithful companions. They instruct, cheer, elevate, and ennoble us; and 
 in whatever mood we go to them, they never frown upon us, but receive us with cordial 
 and loving sincerity: neither do they blab, or tell tales of us when we are gone, to the 
 next comer; but honestly, and with manly frankness, speak to our hearts in admonition 
 or encouragement. I do not know how it is with other men, but I have so much rever- 
 ence for these silent and beautiful friends that I feel in them to have an immortal and di- 
 vine possession, which is more valuable to me than many estates and kingdoms. The 
 noise and babble of men disturb me not in my princely domain, enriched by the presence 
 of so many high and royal souls. We make too little of books, and have quite lost the 
 meaning of contemplation. Our times are too busy, too exclusively outward in their ten- 
 dency, and men have lost their balance in the whirlpools of commerce and the fierce tor- 
 nadoes of political strife. I want to see more poise in men, more self-possession; and 
 these can only be gained by communion with books. I lay stress on the word commun- 
 ion. If an author be worth anything, he is worth bottoming. It may be all very well to 
 skim milk, for the cream lies on the top ; but who could skim Lord Bacon ? 
 
 "JANUARY SEARLE." 
 
77 
 BREVIER No. u. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 55 LINES, 777 WORDS. 
 
 F a man with a fondness for books has also money enough to 
 build a special room to hold them, as did the late William E. Bur- 
 ton to contain his fine theatrical library, he ought to consult 
 those learned in the law of book-protecting. He would be told 
 that the library should have very thick walls, to exclude the 
 damp of spring, the heat of summer, and the cold of winter. He 
 would be informed that the library should have windows only on 
 one side, and that these windows should be recessed, that the sun may not shine in 
 too violently, to the increase of moths and worms, and to the destruction of bind- 
 ings. He would learn that the library should not be a corner, and that it should 
 be protected, if possible, by other rooms on three sides. There are those who 
 advocate a library wholly without windows, and lighted only by a skylight; but 
 this is too severe and cheerless an arrangement for a true book-lover. There 
 should be no carpet on the floor, for carpets hold dust, and dust is a great danger 
 to books. Rugs, which may be shaken frequently, are sufficient covering for the 
 floor. The heating arrangements, an open fire-place if convenient, should be ample 
 enough to warm the room without making it hot ; the ordinary hot-air furnace is 
 very injurious to books, and should be the last resort. 
 
 These, however, are prescriptions for those who carry a long purse. The ordi- 
 nary American is well satisfied if he can give up any corner of his house to his 
 books. As often as not it is an odd room, useless for any other purpose, and cheer- 
 less at all times. Now this ought not to be. The library should be a room into 
 which every member of the family may feel glad to go. It ought to be bright and 
 cheerful. It ought to be easily accessible. It ought to be wanned in winter, and 
 protected from the glare of the sun in summer. If the only room which can be de- 
 voted to holding books is too small to hold all the volumes the family is fortunate 
 enough to own, or if no room at all can be given up to them exclusively, then by all 
 means let the books overflow the house. Some authors have had books in almost 
 every room of their residence. Southey had his even down along the staircase, 
 lining its walls, and Shelley declares that Southey did not like his venturing to 
 take down a volume as he descended the steps. 
 
 . There are book-cases and book-cases, just as there are books and books. There 
 is the richly-carved cabinet, with its inlaid panels, its elaborate brass, its silken 
 curtains, its beveled glass, its chamois-covered shelves, its tough back carefully 
 protected against damp, all uniting to perfect a fit tabernacle for priceless volumes, 
 so old, so rare, so beautifully bound, as to be absolutely too precious for human 
 creatures' daily food. There is the single board held against the side of a shanty 
 by a bit of string and a nail or two, and supporting a worn Emerson, an old copy 
 of Franklin, a cheap Shakespeare, and two or three volumes of Cooper, Scott, or 
 Longfellow, battered and worn. And between these two extremes are number- 
 less intermediate varieties. There is the sober row of books filling the top of the 
 mantel-piece a bad place for books, as the warped backs and cracking covers re- 
 veal only too soon. There is the first attempt at a book-case, the box once filled 
 with soap or wine, now planed and stained and divided in two by a transverse 
 partition, which serves as a shelf, and with the bottom and top gives accommo- 
 dation for three rows of books ; this primitive device is not to be despised, for it 
 will afford shelf room for quite fifty volumes, two-thirds of which are inside the 
 box, and are thus always ready to move and easy to handle. In a country with a 
 population as nomadic as ours, any book-case, however elementary, which holds 
 books as well in one place as another, and as well when moving from one place to 
 another as when settled, and which saves all trouble of packing before transport 
 and of rearrangement afterward, is not without its good points ; and there are 
 many worse ways of providing for books than a combination by means of a few 
 screws of half a dozen such boxes into a large stand. A Massachusetts author 
 keeps his entire library of several thousand volumes in these boxes. 
 
BREVIER No. 15. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 54 LINES, 729 WORDS. 
 
 E not only set before ourselves a service to 
 God in preparing volumes of new books, 
 but we exercise the duties of a holy piety 
 if we first handle so as not to injure them, 
 then return them to their proper places 
 and commend them to undenTmg cus- 
 tody, that they may rejoice in their purity 
 while held in the hand and repose in se- 
 curity when laid up in their repositories. 
 Truly, next to the vestments and the ves- 
 sels dedicated to the body of the Lord, 
 holy books deserve to be most decorously 
 handled by the clergy, upon which injury 
 is inflicted as often as they presume to 
 touch them with a dirty hand. Where- 
 for, we hold it expedient to exhort stu- 
 dents upon various negligences which can 
 always be avoided. 
 
 In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that 
 they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without 
 being duly closed ; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a 
 shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of 
 their superiors, are puffed up with infinite absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presump- 
 tion, judge of everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything. 
 
 You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost 
 pinches him in winter time; oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble 
 to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew. For 
 such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of his book. He has a nail like a 
 giant's, with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He distributes innumerable 
 straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his mem- 
 ory cannot retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which no- 
 body takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure, and being carelessly left to 
 oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, 
 and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag at 
 hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal 
 garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical mean- 
 ing, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is 
 worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; 
 and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small 
 detriment of the volume. He goes out in the rain, and now flowers make their appearance upon 
 our soil. Then the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector of books, 
 stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, 
 oozing with sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with his 
 dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his forefinger covered with dirty leather. 
 Then, as the flea bites, the holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a 
 month, and is so swelled with dust that it will not yield to the efforts of the closer. 
 
 And impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with books, who, when they 
 are learning to draw the forms of letters, if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, 
 begin to become incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin about 
 the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their unchastened pen immediately pre- 
 sumes to draw any other frivolous thing whatever that occurs to their imagination. There are 
 also certain thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins for letter- 
 paper (leaving only the letters or text), or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, 
 which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema. 
 
 RICHARD DE BURY. 
 
79 
 BREVIER LIGHT FACE. LEADED. 50 LINES, 497 WORDS. 
 
 HERE is some comfort for those who, like the 
 essayist Henry Rogers for example, look with 
 despair upon the accumulation of hooks, and 
 with hopefulness in some overruling fate which 
 disposed of the Alexandria library. There is an 
 enormous mass no doubt of "books in the world, 
 hut when we subtract the books to be read from 
 the books which simply serve some temporary purpose, the 
 remainder is small enough to restore cheerfulness, and when 
 again we divide, setting apart those books which are them- 
 selves the origin and cause of other books, there is hope even 
 for the man of business, that in his leisure moments he may 
 read and enjoy them all. 
 
 The practical use to which every student or reader may put 
 this discovery, is in the right he may claim to select his read- 
 ing. Since the mere fact of something being in print lays no 
 compulsion upon him to read it, for there is a splendid impos- 
 sibility of his reading everything, he may have the most 
 dense ignorance of the great mass of what goes by the name 
 of literature, and retain his self-respect. Some idle reader of 
 advertisements and book-notices saunters along with us as 
 we go to our work and speaks of this or that new book, and 
 we may bravely admit our utter ignorance of it. We need 
 give ourselves no more concern about it than we do about 
 the young women who comb their hair and shake bottles in 
 advertisements of hair oil. Yet it requires oftentimes no 
 small courage to be ready with our ignorance. It Is like the 
 mention of a name to us in conversation with a friend, who 
 appeals to us for a sort of moral support as he is about to tell 
 a story: You know ? We gently incline our head, try- 
 ing not to commit ourselves to a plump acknowledgment. It 
 is not of the slightest consequence to the story, but we are so 
 anxious to oblige a friend. And in discourse of many books 
 we are apt to give tacit admission of an acquaintance with 
 them. Yes, we have merely seen it, we say, and bow on the 
 counter; we mentally explain, but it sounds as if we had 
 glanced through it at least. 
 
 The dispersion of literature by the manifold instruments of 
 books, magazines, and papers, and the universal spread of a 
 common-school education, have conspired to cheapen not the 
 real value of literature, but its apparent value. Every one 
 reads nearly every one writes. Books that have cost labor 
 are condensed into a review article, strained into a weekly 
 journal, scattered in short paragraphs through the daily pa- 
 pers. Gossip about authors, tattle about their work, vulgar 
 comparisons, and the easy praise of good-natured, hard- worked 
 noticers, help to make the act of reading an indolent diver- 
 sion. Printing caused writing, and the awakening of human 
 thought, which was contemporaneous with the invention of 
 printing, found other forms of activity also. 
 
8o 
 ELZEVIR BODY 8. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 49 LINES, 707 WORDS. 
 
 B.?y UT books have the advantage in many other respects : you may read 
 I an able preacher, when you have but a mean one to hear. Every 
 1 congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers ; 
 i but every single person may read the books of the most powerful 
 I and judicious. Preachers maybe silenced or banished, when books 
 muama&imuBJB may be at hand : books may be kept at a smaller charge than preach- 
 ers: we may choose books which treat of that very subject which we desire to hear 
 of, but we cannot choose what subject the preacher shall treat of. Books we may 
 have at hand every day and hour, when we can have sermons but seldom, and at set 
 times. If sermons be forgotten, they are gone. But a book we may read over and 
 over until we remember it ; and, if we forget it, we may again peruse it at our pleas- 
 ure, or at our leisure. So that good books are a very great mercy to the world. 
 
 As for play-books, and romances, and idle tales, I have already shewed in my 
 "Book of Self-Denial" how pernicious they are, especially to youth, and to frothy, 
 empty, idle wits, that know not what a. man is, nor what he hath to do in the world. 
 They are powerful baits of the devil, to keep more necessary things out of their 
 minds, and better books out of their hands, and to poison the mind so much the more 
 dangerously, as they are read with more delight and pleasure : and to fill the minds 
 of sensual people with such idle fumes and intoxicating fancies as may divert them 
 from the serious thoughts of their salvation, and (which is no small loss) to rob them 
 of that precious time which was given them for more important business, and which 
 they will wish and wish again at the last that they had spent more wisely. 
 
 Reading, with most people, doth more conduce to knowledge than hearing doth, 
 and with very many it doth more than hearing to move the heart ; because lively 
 books may be more easily had than lively preachers. 
 
 The truth is, it is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a 
 man wise or good ; but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. 
 And yet the reading of as many as is possible tendeth much to the increase of knowl- 
 edge, and were the best way, if greater matters were not that way unavoidably to be 
 omitted ; life therefore being short, and work great, and knowledge being for love 
 and practice, and no man having leisure to learn all things, a wise man must be sure 
 to lay hold on that which is most useful. And the very subjects that are to be un- 
 derstood are numerous, and few men write of all. And on the same subject men 
 have several modes of writing ; as one excelleth in accurate method, and another in 
 clear, convincing argumentation, and another in an affectionate, taking style: and the 
 book that doth one cannot well do the other, because the same style will not do it. 
 
 Great store of all sorts of good books (through the great mercy of God) are com- 
 mon among us : he that cannot buy, may borrow. But take heed that you lose not 
 your time in reading romances, play-books, vain jests, seducing or reviling disputes, 
 or needless controversies. A course of reading Scripture and good books will be 
 many ways to your great advantage. It will, above all other ways, increase your 
 knowledge. It will help your resolutions and holy affections, and direct your lives. 
 It will make your lives pleasant. The knowledge, the usefulness, and the variety to 
 be found in these works will be a continual recreation to you, unless you are utterly 
 besotted or debauched. The pleasure of this will turn you from your fleshly pleas- 
 ures. You will have no need to go for delight to a play-house or a drinking-house. 
 It will keep you from the sinful loss of time, by idleness or unprofitable employment 
 or pastimes. You will cast away cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youth- 
 ful learning. 
 
 RICHARD BAXTER. 
 
8i 
 BREVIER KXPANDKD. TRIPLE LEADED. 36 LINES, 295 WORDS. 
 
 DEENESS is a disease which must be 
 combated; but I Avould not advise a rigid 
 adherence to a particular plan of study. 
 I myself have never persisted in any plan 
 for two days together. A man ought to read just 
 as inclination leads him ; for what he reads as a 
 task will do him little good." A young man 
 should read five hours in the day, and so may 
 acquire a great deal of knowledge. . . . 
 
 He then took occasion to enlarge on the advan- 
 tage of reading, and combated the idle, superficial 
 notion that knowledge enough may be acquired 
 in conversation. "The foundation," said he, "must 
 be laid by reading." General principles must be 
 had from books, which, however, must be brought 
 to the test of real life. In conversation you never 
 get a system. What is said upon a subject is to 
 be gathered from a hundred people. The parts 
 of a truth which a man gets thus are at such a 
 distance from each other that he never attains a 
 satisfactory view. . . . 
 
 He said that for general improvement a man 
 should read whatever his immediate inclination 
 prompts him to; though to be wise, if a man 
 have a science to learn, he must regularly and 
 resolutely advance. He added, "What we read 
 with inclination works a much stronger impres- 
 sion." If we read without inclination, half the 
 mind is employed in fixing the attention; so 
 there is but one-half to be employed on what we 
 read. He told us he read Fielding's "Amelia" 
 through without stopping. He said, "if a man 
 begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels 
 an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go 
 to the beginning. He may not feel again the 
 inclination." 
 
 BOSWELL , S M8im JOHKSON ,, 
 
82 
 BREVIER No. 20. LEADED. 50 LINES, 734 WORDS. 
 
 POET so full of zest as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is wont to live his 
 life, rather than to scorn delights in service of the thankless muse. Dr. 
 Holmes's easy-going method, and a sensible estimate of his own powers, 
 have defined the limits of his zeal. His poetry was and is, like his humor, 
 the overflow of a nervous, original, decidedly intellectual nature ; of spark- 
 ling life, no less, in which he gathered the full worth of heyday experiences. 
 See that glimpse of Paris, a student's pencilled sketch, with Clemence 
 tripping down the Rue de Seine. It is but a bit, yet through its atmosphere we make out 
 a poet who cared as much for the sweets of the poetic life as for the work that was its 
 product. He had through it all a Puritan sense of duty, and the worldly wisdom that goes 
 with a due perception of values, and he never lost sight of his practical career. His pro- 
 fession, after all, was what he took most seriously. Accepting, then, with hearty thanks, 
 his care-dispelling rhyme and reason, pleased often by the fancies which he tenders in lieu 
 of imagination and power, we go through the collection of his verse, and see that it has 
 amounted to a great deal in the course of a bustling fifty years. These numerous pieces 
 divide themselves, as to form, into two classes lyrics and poetic essays in solid couplet- 
 verse ; as to purpose, into the lighter songs that may be sung, and the nobler numbers, 
 part lyrical, part the poems, both gay and sober, delivered at frequent intervals during his 
 pleasant career. In the years that followed his graduation, while practicing in Boston and 
 afterward a lecturer at Dartmouth, he was summoned, nothing loath, whenever a dinner- 
 song or witty ballad was needed at home, and calls from transpontine and barbaric regions 
 came fast upon him as his popularity grew. Here are some forty printed poems, which 
 cheered that lucky class of '29, and how many others went before and after them we know 
 not. He is among college poets the paragon, and is surely the ideal civic bard. 
 
 The Autocrat is an essential part of Boston, like the crier who becomes so identified 
 with a court that it seems as if Justice must change her quarters when he is gone. The 
 Boston of Holmes, distinct as his own personality, certainly must go with him. Much 
 will become new, when old things pass away with the generation of a wit who made 
 a jest that his State House was the hub of the solar system, and in his heart believed it. 
 The time is ended when we can be so local : this civic faith was born before the age of 
 steam, and cannot outlast, save as a tradition, the advent of electric motors and octuple- 
 sheets. Towns must lose their individuality, even as men who yearly differ less from 
 one another. Yet the provincialism of Boston has been its charm, and its citizens, striv- 
 ing to be cosmopolitan, in time may repent the effacement of their birth-mark. 
 
 A phantasmagory of the songs, odes, and rhymed addresses of so many years ; col- 
 legiate and civic glories ; tributes to princes, embassies, generals, heroes ; welcomes to 
 novelists and poets ; eulogies of the dead ; verse inaugural and dedicatory ; stanzas read 
 at literary breakfasts, New England dinners, municipal and bucolic feasts ; odes natal, 
 nuptial, and mortuary ; metrical delectations offered to his brothers of the medical craft to 
 which he is so loyal bristling with scorn of quackery and challenge to opposing systems 
 not only equal to all occasions, but growing better with their increase. The half of his 
 early collections is made up from efforts of this sort, and they constitute four-fifths of his 
 verse during the last thirty years. 
 
 Now, what has carried Holmes so bravely through all this, if not a special kind of mas- 
 terhood, an individuality, humor, touch, that we shall not see again ? Thus we come, in 
 fine, to be sensible of the distinctive gift of this poet. The achievement for which he must 
 be noted is, that in a field the most arduous and least attractive he should bear himself 
 with such zest and fitness as to be numbered among poets, and should do honor to an 
 office which they chiefly dread or mistrust, and which is little calculated to excite their 
 inspiration. 
 
 E. C. STEDMAN, "Poets of America." 
 
83 
 BREVIER No. u. LEADED. 50 LINES, 673 WORDS. 
 
 * 
 
 REASONABLE number of good books for boys is not to be had. 
 Many of the old tales are out of point. Most of the new ones are 
 trash. Some of the trash is religious in tone. Much more of it is 
 of the "Old Sleuth" variety of reading. A part of it follows the 
 "Jack Harkaway" style of impossible schoolboy feats. But all of 
 it is useless from a literary, teaching, or amusing standpoint. 
 
 Some years ago counterfeit bank notes were common throughout the country. 
 People looked on every note they received with great suspicion. Many of these 
 notes were accepted at a heavy discount. Only legal tender notes passed without 
 question at the full standard of value. It is a pity that there is no way of dis- 
 tinguishing good books from bad ones, like the old tests employed to find out 
 which bank notes were good and which were bad. If there were, books might 
 be stamped at their face value and readers might buy them accordingly. As it 
 is, counterfeits of books are very plentiful, and only the practiced eye can detect 
 the fraud that lies under the respectable cover. 
 
 In former days, readers were much fewer than at present. The writer found 
 that -publishers would only accept his work after the most careful scrutiny. Good 
 fiction, especially, was not buried under a mass of rubbish as it is at present. It 
 is impossible for even a man whose sole business in life is to write about novels, 
 to keep track of all the stories, good and bad, now annually published. 
 
 Much of this superabundance of fiction is due to the financial needs of a few 
 writers of stories who have turned their profession into a trade. After writing 
 a few books with care, and receiving public appreciation for the doing of it, they 
 began to use their names as a kind of trade mark and to prostitute their talents 
 to rehashing their own first and best work. So far have such schemes been devel- 
 oped that several catch names are owned by New -York publishers of cheap fiction, 
 and any modern Grub-street hack may be employed to write under such titles ; the 
 real author receives remuneration for his work, and waives the "glory." 
 
 The primary object of books in a boy's hands is amusement. He does not care 
 a peanut for the instruction a book may contain. If he is informed that it will 
 do him good, he will most probably cease reading it at once. But while the dime- 
 novel variety of reading induces a morbid craving for more that is never satisfied, 
 good books are like a healthy meal that comes in its due season. A boy may have 
 his good impulses increased by reading good books, just as they will be depraved 
 by reading bad ones. All kinds of seed grow in a boy's fertile mind. 
 
 Modern writers make a great mistake to suppose that boys are not, in their way, 
 as great critics as grown persons. They know a good book when they read it. 
 Witness Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and Thomas Bailey Aldrich's 
 "Story of a Bad Boy." Indeed, the latter story seems nearer to the genuine univer- 
 sal American boy's heart than any other book written. Just as the Viking blood 
 of British boys makes them like "Robinson Crusoe" and wish to be sailors, so the 
 "Story of a Bad Boy" impels the American boy to " do things." 
 
 Boys will have good books when their parents exercise an intelligent supervision 
 in the selection of them. The Free Circulating Library and its branches and the 
 Mercantile Library have done excellent work in this direction. But boys want 
 healthier, stronger food than the libraries will grant them without their parents' 
 cooperation. Any one who takes an interest in boys' reading should examine the 
 catalogue of the juvenile department of the Mercantile Library. It is excellent, 
 no doubt, but the omissions and retentions are a chart of what the average parent 
 thinks a boy should read. 
 
 NEW -YORK SUN. 
 
8 4 
 MINION No. 20. SOLID. 71 LINES, 1118 WORDS. 
 
 JHARLES LAMB left us many bright paragraphs helpful to book-lovers. In an 
 essay on "The Two Races of Men " is this passage: "To one like Elia, whose 
 treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is 
 a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon : I 
 mean your borrowers of books those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the 
 symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. That foul gap in the bottom 
 shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked 'out (you are now with me in 
 
 my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader) with the huge Switzer-like tomes 
 
 on each side, once held the tallest of my folios, 'Opera Bonaventurae,' choice and massy di- 
 vinity, to which its two supporters showed but as dwarfs. That Comberbatch [Coleridge] ab- 
 stracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by 
 than to refute, namely, that 'the title to property in a book [my Bonaventure, for instance] is 
 in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should 
 he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? The slight vacuum in the left- 
 hand case, two shelves from the ceiling, scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a 
 loser, was whilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly al- 
 lege that he knows more about that treatise than 1 do, who introduced it to him, and was in- 
 deed the first of the moderns to discover its beauties; but so have I known a foolish lover to 
 praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified than himself to carry her off. Just 
 below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is. The re- 
 mainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here 
 stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete Angler ; and 
 in yonder nook John Buncle, a widower volume, with ' eyes closed,' mourns his ravished mate." 
 
 From " Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading " these extracts are taken : "I have no 
 repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read 
 anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. 
 In this catalogue of books which are no books I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket 
 Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Stat- 
 utes at Large, the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Tenyns, and, generally, 
 all those volumes which ' no gentleman's library should be without,' the Histories of Flavius 
 Josephus, and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. 
 I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 
 
 "I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' clothing perched upon 
 shelves, like false saints, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. 
 To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, 
 then, opening what ' seem its leaves,' to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To 
 expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assort- 
 ment of block-headed Encyclopedias set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe of 
 that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios ; would renovate Paracelsus 
 himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see 
 these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. 
 
 "I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew 
 a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen iipon Snow-hill, between the hours of ten 
 and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain 
 of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of sec- 
 ular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a bread basket would have quickly put to flight 
 all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 
 
 "There is a class of street-readers whom I can never contemplate without affection the 
 poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the 
 open stalls; the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and 
 thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every mo- 
 ment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, 
 
 they 'snatch a fearful joy.' Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two 
 
 volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition by asking him 
 whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares that under no circumstances of his life 
 did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches." 
 
 From "Old China" : " Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you 
 till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare and all because of that 
 folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent 
 Garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to 
 the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
 night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late and when the old book- 
 seller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting 
 bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing 
 it were twice as cumbersome and when you presented it to me and when we were exploring 
 the perfectness of it ('collating' you called it) and while I was repairing some of the loose 
 leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak was there 
 no pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and 
 are so careful to keep brushed since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest 
 vanity with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit for four or five weeks longer than 
 you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum which you had lavished ? " 
 
85 
 
 MINION No. n. SOLID. 71 LINES, 1094 WORDS. 
 
 WILLINGLY concede all that you say against fashionable society as a 
 whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on amusement, incapable of at- 
 tention sufficiently prolonged to grasp any serious subject, and liable both 
 to confusion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily forms or easily 
 receives. You do right, assuredly, not to let it waste your most valuable 
 hours, but I believe also that you do wrong in keeping out of it alto- 
 gether. The society which seems so frivolous in masses contains indi- 
 vidual members who, if you knew them better, would be able and willing 
 to render you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this help 
 by restricting yourself exclusively to books. Nothing can replace the conversation of living 
 men and women ; not even the richest literature can replace it. 
 
 The solitude which is really injurious is the severance from all who are capable of under- 
 standing us. Painters say that they cannot work effectively for very long together when 
 separated from the society of artists, and that they must return to London, or Paris, or 
 Rome, to avoid an oppressive feeling of discouragement which paralyzes their productive 
 energy. Authors are more fortunate, because all cultivated people are society for them ; 
 yet even authors lose strength and agility of thought when too long deprived of a genial 
 intellectual atmosphere. In the country you meet with cultivated individuals ; but we need 
 more than this, we need those general conversations in which every speaker is worth lis- 
 tening to. The life most favorable to culture would have its times of open and equal inter- 
 course with the best minds, and also its periods of retreat. My ideal would be a house in 
 London, not far from one or two houses that are so full of light and warmth that it is a 
 liberal education to have entered them, and a solitary tower on some island of the Heb- 
 rides, with no companions but the sea-gulls and the thundering surges of the Atlantic. 
 One such island I know well, and it is before my mind's eye, clear as a picture, while I am 
 writing. It stands in the very entrance of a fine salt water loch, rising above two hundred 
 feet out of the water and setting its granite front steep against the western ocean. When 
 the evenings are clear you can see Staffa and lona like blue clouds between you and the 
 sunset ; and on your left, close at hand, the granite hills of Mull, with Ulva to the right 
 across the narrow strait. It was the dream of my youth to build a tower there, with three 
 or four little rooms in it, and walls as strong as a lighthouse. There have been more fool- 
 ish dreams, and there have been less competent teachers than the tempests that would have 
 roused me and the calms that would have brought me peace. If any serious thought, if 
 any noble inspiration might have been hoped for, surely it would have been there, where 
 only the clouds and waves were transient, but the ocean before me, and the stars above, 
 and the mountains on either hand, were emblems and evidences of eternity. 
 
 Let me recommend certain precautions which taken together are likely to keep you safe. 
 Care for the physical health in the first place, for if there is a morbid mind the bodily or- 
 gans are not doing their work as they ought to do it. Next, for the mind itself, I would 
 heartily recommend hard study, really hard study, taken very regularly but in very mod- 
 erate quantity. The effect of it on the mind is as bracing as that of cold water on the body, 
 but as you ought not to remain too long in the cold bath, so it is dangerous to study hard 
 more than a short time every day. Do some work that is very difficult (such as reading 
 some language that you have to study out d coups de dictionnaire) two hours a day regularly, 
 to brace the fighting power of the intellect, but let the rest of the day's work be easier. Ac- 
 quire especially, if you possibly can, the enviable faculty of getting entirely rid of your 
 work in the intervals of it, and of taking a hearty interest in common things, in a garden, 
 or stable, or dog-kennel, or farm. If the work pursues you, if what is called unconscious 
 cerebration, which ought to go forward without your knowing it, becomes conscious cere- 
 bration, and bothers you, then you have been working beyond your cerebral strength. 
 
 The reading practised by most people, by all who do not set before themselves intellectual 
 culture as one of the definite aims of life, is remarkable for the regularity with which it 
 neglects all the great authors of the past. The books provided by the circulating library, 
 the reviews and magazines, the daily newspapers, are read while they are novelties, but 
 the standard authors are left on their shelves unopened. We require a firm resolution to 
 resist this invasion of what is new, because it flows like an unceasing river, and unless we 
 protect our time against it by some solid embankment of unshakable rule and resolution, 
 every nook and cranny of it will be filled and flooded. An Englishman whose life was de- 
 voted to culture, but who lived in an out-of-the-way place on the Continent, told me that 
 he considered it a decided advantage to his mind to live quite outside of the English library 
 system, because if he wanted to read a new book he had to buy it and pay heavily for car- 
 riage besides, which made him very careful in his choice. For the same reason he rejoiced 
 that the nearest English newsroom was two hundred miles from his residence. 
 
 For literary men there is nothing so valuable as a window with a cheerful and beautiful 
 prospect. In years gone by, I had only to look up from my desk and see a noble loch in its 
 inexhaustible loveliness, and a mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and hourly delight 
 to watch the breezes play about the enchanted isles, on the delicate silvery surface, dim- 
 ming some clear reflection, or trailing it out in length, or cutting sharply across it with 
 acres of rippling blue. It was a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play about the crest" of 
 Cruachan and Ben Vorich's golden head, grey mists that crept upwards from the valleys 
 till the sunshine caught them and made them brighter than the snows they shaded. 
 
 PHILIP G. HAMERTON. 
 
86 
 
 MINION No. 20. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 61 LINES, 659 WORDS. 
 
 UST how watchful and painstaking 
 the proof-readers in large printing es- 
 tablishments are required to be, may 
 be understood from the following ex- 
 tracts from the Instructions to Proof- 
 readers -in the Office Manual of the 
 DeVinne Press: 
 
 The spelling, capitalizing, and 
 pointing of a writer who is educated 
 and methodical must not be changed 
 without order from editor or the office. 
 If the writer be educated but not me- 
 thodical, the reader must make his 
 work uniform in style according to 
 what he believes is the writer's neg- 
 lected standard. If the copy has been 
 very carelessly written, or is clearly the 
 work of an undisciplined writer, the 
 reader will correct the proof according 
 to the standard of the editor or of the 
 office, as may be directed. 
 
 Bad spelling and bad grammar for 
 which there is no authority must be 
 corrected where they have obviously 
 been made through ignorance or 
 thoughtlessness. Exception must be 
 made to this rule in dialect and quo- 
 
 tations intended to be literally exact. Dialect must be made uniform in spelling, even if irreg- 
 ular in copy ; different abbreviations of the same word by the same writer should not be passed. 
 
 Strange proper names, either of places or people, of history or fiction, must always be veri- 
 fied by reference to a biographical or geographical dictionary. A reader is in fault if he allow 
 to be misspelled any word which can be found in the reference books of the office. The same 
 observation will apply to quotations from the Bible, to ordinary proverbs, quotations or phrases 
 in foreign languages, and to the ordinary nomenclature of science. 
 
 The time to be spent and the care to be given to a piece of reading must be determined by its 
 importance. Ordinary work should be made correct to copy and yet done with reasonable 
 dispatch. Writings of value should always be read critically, with a view to the discovery of 
 more serious errors than those of spelling and punctuation. 
 
 When the reader discovers a plain error of statement, obviously made by the writer through 
 lapse of memory or slip of the pen, he should correct. He does so, however, at his peril. He 
 must know, and not suspect, it to be an error, and must be prepared to vindicate the soundness 
 of his correction, not by his own belief, but by recognized authority. Wherever he only sus- 
 pects error, he must query. 
 
 Whenever he makes a change in a quotation, date, or statement, he must, without exception, 
 note upon the author's proof the change he has made. 
 
 In every writing of value, the reader should query faulty construction in a sentence, a bad 
 metaphor, an inconsistent statement, the misuse of a word, and all faults of similar character; 
 but in no case will he be allowed to correct these faults when the author will follow his reading. 
 He must stop with the query. Only in extreme cases will he be warranted in suggesting to the 
 author a proper correction. The reader must not overstep his duty, which is to correct and not 
 to edit. He must not spend unnecessary time in the consultation of reference books to make up 
 the deficiencies of a careless writer, nor should he worry an author with suggested emendations, 
 or pedantic niceties. 
 
 Every paragraph containing an alteration in a proof that makes one or more overruns must 
 be re-read as first proof. It must be read aloud by copy-holder, from last altered proof, or 
 must be collated, word for word, to the end of the paragraph. Revising the alteration only, 
 and re-reading the paragraph without copy-holder or collation, will not be permitted. 
 
 The second reader must not remodel the punctuation of the first, nor make any serious change 
 in the work he has done, unless the matters to be corrected are of unmistakable importance. 
 If he thinks it necessary to make great changes, he should submit the changes proposed to the 
 foreman for his decision. 
 
8; 
 
 MINION No. ii. TKN-TO-PICA LEADS. 61 LINKS, 828 WORDS. 
 
 ROM the same Manual are selected these Rules for Compositors : 
 
 As a general rule, follow the fairly prepared copy of an educated writer, in 
 spelling, punctuation, and use of capitals. If you find some words spelled con- 
 trary to prevailing usage, such as Kikero, honour, Havannah, almanack, or if 
 pointing and capitalizing violate office rules, follow copy without question. It 
 is the author's undoubted right to go before the public in his own way. But make 
 sure that these peculiarities are his way that they are of set purpose and not pen-slips. 
 
 This rule will not apply to magazines, in which the methods of spelling, pointing, and 
 capitalizing adopted by the editor, for the sake of uniformity, must be observed in prefer- 
 ence to the wishes of the author. 
 
 You must not follow copy that has been carelessly prepared, without system in the use of 
 points and capitals, and by a writer who spells badly, either through carelessness or ignor- 
 ance. You must correct faults of spelling and of grammar ; but you must not transpose 
 clauses, nor disconnect sentences that are too long, nor change words that have not been 
 properly selected. Editing must be done in the manuscript, not at case, nor even in the proof. 
 
 Reprint copy, when inserted in a text, in the form of extracts from old books, or letters 
 or quotations intended to be literally exact, must be scrupulously followed in every detail 
 of spelling, abbreviation, pointing, or bad grammar. All the peculiarities of the writer 
 must be preserved, without regard to the method of composition observed in the text. 
 
 The text must be uniform in spelling, pointing, and capitalizing, according to the standard 
 selected, which will, as here specified, sometimes be that of the office and, at others, that 
 of editor or author. 
 
 In standard book-work, when capitalizing according to the rules of the office, use capitals 
 sparingly. The pronouns he, his, and him, when referring to Deity, will always begin with 
 lower-case h, as is done in the Bible. On catalogues and general job-work, capitals should 
 be more freely used as a means of emphasis. 
 
 Divisions of words are not so objectionable as uneven spacing. Do not avoid them at the 
 expense of uniform spacing. 
 
 The violent planing-down of a form will be regarded as evidence of the ignorance of the 
 workman who does it. The same remark will apply to unnecessary force in beating a proof. 
 
 Follow, as closely as you can, the directions on your copy concerning display, as may be 
 indicated by underscoring or otherwise. If copy is underscored too much, give the leading 
 lines full prominence, and reduce the size of the minor lines of display. 
 
 Set the matter as writer directs, so as to make the most show, even if the direction is in 
 violation of established typographical rules. 
 
 Never select ornamented letter for advertisements, or for books, or legal or mercantile 
 work. 
 
 You may use the plainer faces of black-letter and pointed texts for the display of law and 
 church work, but they must be used sparingly and with discretion. 
 
 Even in ornamental work use ornaments and ornamental letter sparingly. They are not 
 ornamental when used in excess or inappropriately. 
 
 As a rule, legibility is wanted oftener than ornament. Plain faces have more admirers 
 than fancy letters. 
 
 If you have liberty to choose, never set a solid text type in a measure of more than fifty 
 ems of that text type. Long lines are hard to read. 
 
 If you can do so, select for the body of the text a type that can be leaded. A dozen lines 
 of leaded long primer are more readable than fifteen lines of solid small pica. 
 
 The monotony of a large piece of plain text, in which or over which there can be little or 
 no display, can be relieved by a large initial letter. 
 
 For plain book-work, or for matter like it, in its avoidance of display, a plain two-line 
 letter is large enough. For a circular, or a large quarto page, an initial of three or four lines 
 is permissible. Plain initials of same cut as the text are, as a rule, the ones most approved. 
 
 Avoid fantastic arrangements of types and ornaments. Do not try to show your skill by 
 eccentric fancies in composition, but try to show up the subject-matter in the simplest manner. 
 
 Never make ornamentation or ornamental letter the feature of your work. Use ornaments 
 only to grace the letter, not to draw the eye away from the reading matter. Observe the 
 architect's rule : You may ornament construction ; you must not construct ornament. 
 
 Business Cards should be in very plain and readable types, and the lines should be 
 arranged in the simplest manner. Do not use curved lines or ornamental letters without 
 order. Avoid also extra condensed, script, and black letters. 
 
 If practicable, set the card in one style only, making display by different sizes of that style. 
 
88 
 MINION No. 20. LEADED. 55 LINES, 895 WORDS. 
 
 HE old theory of a book was, that if it were good enough to print it was good 
 enough to bind, so as to preserve it permanently to be read over and over 
 again. But since no book is sufficiently dry, nor is the type set on the paper 
 for this purpose, it was necessary to place it in some kind of wrapper to 
 serve a temporary end. The most elementary covering is that paper wrap 
 known and cursed by all purchasers of German and French books the 
 ' lightest sewing, the flimsiest cover, so that the book is in rags before it is 
 read through. But the miraculous thing is, that Continental students not only seem willing to 
 endure this, but, whether it is that they read their books laid flat on the table and less at the 
 fireside than we do, they certainly tear their books less apart, and actually keep them on the 
 shelves for years, referring to them now and again in that condition. The amazement was 
 great when, on first making his acquaintance many years ago, the writer gazed on the library 
 shelves of that great scholar and charming writer, M. Renan, nearly all of which were filled to 
 overflowing with books in paper covers, which, because he wanted them so often for reference, 
 he had never had the time to send to the binders. 
 
 The old boarding of the last century, as practiced among ourselves, was pleasant, pretty, and 
 useful. It was simply two sheets of stiff cardboard united by the back, the sides covered with 
 blue or gray paper, and the name of the book on a pasted label. It served its purpose till the 
 book could be bound ; it was neat and cheap, and there was no pretense that it imitated any- 
 thing beyond itself. Yet it had its disadvantages : it caught the dirt easily and soon became 
 shabby; while, unquestionably, there are many books not good enough to deserve a leather 
 binding, which are yet worth preserving as long as we are likely to need them. Hence has 
 sprung up what are called cloth bindings, more or less ornate, fairly inoffensive in the hands of 
 a person of taste, but also frequent vehicles for pretension, vulgarity, and imitation. There is 
 little to be said in reference to this matter, except that in the case of really good books " boards " 
 should always be regarded as temporary, inadequate coverings. And in reference to future 
 bindings, all faces should be set like flints against a detestable habit lately introduced of using 
 wire instead of thread to fasten the sheets together. When a book stitched in this fashion is 
 sent to be really bound, the difficulty of removing the wire is so great that the book is almost 
 sure to be torn ; and, moreover, this again introduces into books what we should so eagerly 
 strive to eliminate, the merely mechanical, non-human labor. 
 
 Readers are much divided on the question whether books should or should not be cut. Some 
 people are angry with the publishers that books to be read are not issued like Bradshaw's 
 Guides, Bibles, Prayer-Books, and the like, with cut edges. The reason is that, when a volume 
 is bound, the edges, being thrown out of the level smoothness they have acquired from the first 
 cutting, will need a second trimming, and the margin will be sensibly reduced, so that the broad 
 type will have a miserably inadequate setting, as though you should put a picture in a frame 
 too narrow for it. Those who care for the future of our well-bound books will see that there 
 is reason for refusing to give in to the unreasonable cry for books with cut edges. But when 
 the paper-knife is used, it should be done thoroughly. Some people never cut a book hu- 
 manely ; they tear it, or maltreat it, as though they had a special enmity toward it. 
 
 When a book worth preserving is really to be bound, the binding should be suitable, and 
 done by a good workman. The early bindings were most costly. In the British Museum and 
 other great collections, are to be seen covers in gold or silver, or carven wood, with bosses of 
 precious stones, or of the metal itself wrought into special ornament on velvet or leather. But 
 of bindings which were to be used and handled daily, the earliest fine specimens, which even 
 now cannot be outdone, date from the first half of the sixteenth century. Many of the bindings 
 executed for Jean Grolier are still extant, and fetch very high prices when they come into the 
 market ; they are remarkable in another way than their beauty, in showing the large and liberal 
 spirit of a man, for they are inscribed, " Of the books of Jean Grolier and his friends." His 
 notion of a book was that it should be used, and indeed if books are to be valued men must be 
 trusted with them, and allowed access even to those which are the most precious. Whoever 
 will have his books really cared for must learn to take in them an intelligent interest, must con- 
 sult with, instruct as well as defer to, the artist, and spend at least as much pains about the 
 clothing of his books as about that of his own person or that of his wife and daughters. 
 
89 
 
 MINION No. ii. LEADED. 55 LINES, 838 WORDS. 
 
 R. JAVAL in the "Revue Scientiflque," goes very thoroughly into the 
 question of what constitutes legibility of type, commencing by glancing 
 at the general progress of type and printing ; then noticing the particu- 
 lar form of each letter ; thereafter going into the question of thin lines 
 ^ or up-strokes, and thick lines or down-strokes, and concluding with the 
 sizes it has been found advisable to adopt both as regards type and 
 ^ leading. 
 
 He contends that the eye, while reading, has not time to thoroughly examine each letter 
 in all its parts, but that it follows a strictly horizontal line, intersecting all the short letters 
 at a point a little below the top, and in proof of this he suggests the following trial, viz. : 
 having read a dozen lines or so of a broad-faced, but not leaded, type, to close your eyes 
 suddenly the result is that one sees reflected in the field of vision "horizontal flutings" 
 alternately light and dark, which are the reproduction of the printed matter. This he con- 
 siders is sufficient to prove, at all events, that the eye travels horizontally while reading. 
 Again, the eye confines itself to gliding horizontally for the purpose of avoiding complicated 
 and useless movements, and the horizontal position is dictated by the structure of our typo- 
 graphical characters. Thus, if you cover over the upper half of a line of type, it is with 
 some difficulty that you can make out the words of which only the lower half is visible ; 
 while if you cover up the lower half, you will be able to read almost as easily as if the whole 
 were entirely exposed. 
 
 Dividing the alphabet into four classes, viz., superior long letters, such as b, d, h, &c. ; 
 inferior long letters, like g, j, p, &c. ; short straight letters, such as m, n, &c., and short 
 round letters, such as a, c, e and s, Dr. Javal points out how much more legible some letters 
 will always be than others no matter what you do to them. He condemns the practice of 
 sacrificing everything to regularity in appearance, and proposes rather to enlarge the heads 
 without altering the lower part of the letters ; and in this he would be guided by ancient 
 precedent. He is strongly in favor of the retention of the " terminal lines" which end the 
 down-strokes, which he considers corresponds to the apices of the ancient Romans, and are 
 not for the sole purpose of ornament, or merely the result of tradition ; but he at the same 
 time suggests their being made heavier, in order that they may not suffer injury when be- 
 ing distributed, or doing correction on the stone, and moreover that they should be reduced 
 somewhat in length. He considers that the perfection of form is a rounded base. 
 
 Dr. Javal would distinguish between type to be used for children and that to be used for 
 adults, for the latter read looking to the general appearance of the letters or even of whole 
 words, whereas a child looks carefully at each part of a letter, and for children he would, 
 therefore, make the up as well as the down strokes heavy. He attaches the greatest import- 
 ance to spacing, and considers that the white space at the sides of letters, as well as between 
 words themselves, has a very important bearing upon the question of legibility, and for 
 that reason he holds up as an example works printed in English, which he deems owe much 
 of their legibility to the shortness of the words in our language, which has the effect of 
 multiplying the white spaces. Absence of leads, our authority considers a matter of no 
 consequence, and would recommend that type founders should direct their attention to in- 
 creasing the width, and not touching or if anything, reducing the depth of the letters. 
 As Dr. Javal says, if paper cost nothing, the question would lose a deal of its interest, one 
 would lead matter heavily, using a heavy broad-faced type, &c., as it is not a difficult thing 
 "to live well when money is no object." The exaggerated length of the lines in type is 
 held to be one of the causes of the increase of short sight in Germany ; and in explanation 
 and support of this view we are given a somewhat elaborate diagram showing the length 
 lines should be, and applying the argument to both short and long-sighted people. 
 
 Dr. Javal brings his excellent paper to a close with the expression of a regret that at pres- 
 ent he is unable to lay down precise rules respecting the employment of the typographic 
 characters actually in use ; but he considers he has proved that legibility is not dependent 
 on leading, or on the height of the letters, but on their breadth, and also on the spacing ; 
 it is only by fixing the number of letters to be allowed laterally, that a useful result can be 
 accomplished. The length of the lines of type will at the same time have to be limited. 
 
90 
 
 MINION No. 16. LEADED. 54 LINES, 909 WORDS. 
 
 XTRACTS from the letters and writings of Thomas Carlyle : 
 
 " Excepting one or two individuals, I have little society that I value very 
 highly ; but books are a ready and effectual resource. May blessings be upon the 
 head of Cadmus, the Pho3iiicians, or whoever it was that invented books ! I 
 may not detain you with the praises of an art that carries the voice of man to 
 the extremity of the earth and to the latest generations; but it is lawful for the 
 solitary wight to express the love he feels for those companions so steadfast and unpresumingi 
 that go or come without reluctance, and that, when his fellow animals are proud or stupid or 
 peevish, are ever ready to cheer the languor of his soul, and gild the barrenness of life with the 
 treasures of bygone times." Letter to Robert Mitchell, 1818. 
 
 "Do not fear that I shall read you a homily on that hackneyed theme contentment. Sim- 
 ply I wish to tell you that in days of darkness for there are days when my support (pride, or 
 whatever it is) has enough to do I find it useful to remember that Cleanthes, whose memor- 
 able words may last yet another two thousand years, never murmured when he labored by 
 night as a street-porter that he might hear the lectures of Zeno by day ; and that Epictetus, the 
 ill-used slave of a cruel tyrant's as wretched minion, wrote that ' Enchiridion ' which may fortify 
 the soul of the latest inhabitant of the earth.'-' Letter to Robert Mitchell, 1818. 
 
 " I thank Heaven I have still a boundless appetite for reading. I have thoughts of lying 
 buried alive here [Craigenputtock] for many years, forgetting all stuff about ' reputation,' suc- 
 cess, and so forth, and resolutely setting myself to gain insight by the only method not shut out 
 from me that of books. Two articles (of fifty pages) in the year will keep me living ; employ- 
 ment in that kind is open enough. For the rest, I really find almost that I do best when forgot- 
 ten by men, and nothing above or around me but the imperishable heaven." Journal, 1832. 
 
 " On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or 
 make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call 
 books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them from the daily newspaper to 
 the sacred Book, what have they not done, what are they not doing ! For indeed, whatever be 
 the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, 
 the highest act of man's faculty that produces a book ? It is the thought of man, the true thau- 
 maturgic virtue, by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to 
 pass, is the vesture of a thought. This London city, with all its houses, palaces, steam engines, 
 cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a thought, but millions of 
 thoughts made into one a huge, immeasurable spirit of a thought, embodied in brick, in iron, 
 smoke, dust, palaces, Parliaments, hackney coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not 
 a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. The thing we called 
 "bits of paper with traces of black ink" is the purest embodiment a thought of man can have. 
 No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and noblest." Lectures on Heroes, 1840. 
 
 " I do not know whether it has been sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds 
 of books. When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most departments of books, in 
 all books, if you take it in a wide sense, he will find that there is a division into good books 
 and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book and a bad kind of book. I am not to assume 
 that you are unacquainted or ill-acquainted with this plain fact ; but I may remind you that it is 
 becoming a very important consideration in our day. And we have to cast aside altogether the 
 idea people have, that if they are reading any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any book, 
 he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that in question ; I even venture 
 to deny that. It would be much safer and better for many a reader that he had no concern with 
 books at all. There is a number, a frightfully increasing number, of books that are decidedly, to 
 the readers of them, not useful. But an ingenious reader will learn, also, that a certain number 
 of books were written by a supremely noble kind of people, though not a very great number. 
 In short, as I think I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men's 
 souls : divided into sheep and goats. Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward : 
 calculated, I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching, in forwarding the teaching of all 
 generations. Others, a frightful multitude, are going down, down ; doing ever the more and 
 the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young 
 friends." Inaugural Address as' Rector of the University at Edinburgh, 1866. 
 
NONPAREIL No. 12. LEADED. 60 LINES, 904 WORDS. 
 
 JORACE WALPOLE'S gothic romance, "The Castle of Otranto," was begun 
 in June, 1764, and finished on the 6th August following. It occupied Hjrlit 
 nights of this period from ten o'clock at night until two in the morning, to 
 the accompaniment of coffee. In a letter to Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, 
 with whom Walpole commenced to correspond in 1762, he gives some further 
 particulars, which because they have been so often quoted can scarcely be 
 omitted here: "Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this romance! I waked 
 one morning in the beginning of last June, from a dream, of which all I could recover was 
 that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like 
 mine with gothic story), and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a 
 gigantic hand in armor. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in 
 the least what I intended to say or relate. The wqrk grew on my hands and I grew fond of 
 it add that I was very glad to think of anything, rather than politics. In short, I was so 
 engrossed by my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote 
 from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morn- 
 ing, when my hand and fingers were so weary that I could not hold the pen to finish the sen- 
 tence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph." 
 
 The work of which the origin is thus described was published in a limited edition on the 
 24th December, 1764, with the title of "The Castle of Otranto, a Story, translated by William 
 Marshal, Gent, from the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. 
 Nicholas at Otranto." The name of the alleged Italian author is sometimes described as an 
 anagram for Horace Walpole a misconception which is easily demonstrated by counting the 
 letters. The book was printed not for Walpole, but for Lownds of Fleet Street, and it was 
 prefaced by an introduction in which the author described and criticised the supposed origi- 
 nal, which he declared to be a black-letter printed at Naples in 1529. Its success was consid- 
 erable. It seems at first to have excited no suspicion as to its authenticity, and it is not clear 
 that even Gray, to whom a copy was sent immediately after publication, was in the secret. 
 " I have received the ' Castle of Otranto,' " he says, " and return you my thanks for it. It 
 engages our attention here [at Cambridge], makes some of us cry a little, and all in general 
 afraid to go to bed o' nights." In the second edition, which followed in April, 1765, Walpole 
 dropped the mask, disclosing his authorship in a second preface of great ability, which, 
 among other things, contains a vindication of Shakespeare's mingling of comedy and tragedy 
 against the strictures of Voltaire a piece of temerity which some of his French friends feared 
 might prejudice him with that formidable critic. But what is even more interesting is his 
 own account of what he had attempted. He had endeavored to blend ancient and modern 
 romance to employ the old supernatural agencies of Scuderi and La Calprenede as the 
 background to the adventures of personages modeled closely upon ordinary life. These are 
 not his actual illustrations, but they express his meaning. "The actions, sentiments, con- 
 versations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days were as unnatural as the machines 
 employed to set them In motion." He would make his heroes and heroines natural in all 
 these things, only borrowing from the older school some of that imagination, invention, and 
 fancy which, in the literal reproduction of life, he thought too much neglected. 
 
 His idea was novel, and the moment a favorable one for its development. Fluently and 
 lucidly written, the " Castle of Otranto" set a fashion in literature. But like many other 
 works produced under similar conditions, it had its day. To the pioneer of a movement 
 which has exhausted itself, there comes often what is almost worse than oblivion discredit 
 and neglect. A generation like the present, for whom fiction has unraveled so many intri- 
 cate combinations, and whose Gothicism and Medievalism is better instructed than Wai- 
 pole's, no longer feels its soul harrowed up in the same way as did his hushed and awestruck 
 readers of the days of the third George. To the critic the book is interesting as the first of a 
 school of romances which had the honor of influencing even the mighty " Wizard of the 
 North," who no doubt in gratitude wrote for " Ballantyne's Novelist's Library" a most 
 appreciative study of the story. But we doubt if that many-plumed and monstrous helmet, 
 which crashes through walls and cellars, could now give a single shiver to the most timorous 
 Cambridge don, while we suspect that the majority of modern students would, like the author, 
 leave Matilda and Isabella talking in the middle of a paragraph, but from a different kind of 
 weariness. Indeed, Walpole's friend, Gilly Williams, wrote to Selwyn upon the appearance 
 of the book, that it was " such a novel that no boarding school miss of thirteen could get 
 through without yawning." Autres temps, autres mceurs especially in the matter of 
 Gothic Romance. 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON, "Memoirs of Horace Walpole." 
 
9 2 
 
 NONPAREIL No. 20. SOLID. 162 LINES, 1442 WORDS. 
 
 OT long ago a delivery wagon of the 
 Adams Express Company stopped at 
 the distinctly dingy front door of 64 
 Madison Avenue. If Mr. Terence 
 Corrigan, the short-haired but accom- 
 plished driver, had known the con- 
 tents of the somewhat heavy box that 
 he lugged into the house and gave into the care of a 
 dark-eyed gentleman with a pleasant voice, who met 
 him in the hall, it is not unlikely that he would have 
 opened his blue eyes, scratched his hard head, and 
 perhaps have sworn a gentle oath or two as he reflected 
 upon the number of fools in the world hitherto undis- 
 covered by himself. The box did not contain either 
 snakes or dynamite only a single book. But that 
 book was worth $16,000. 
 
 It came from Mr. Theodore Irwin of Oswego, N. Y., 
 and was sent to the Grolier Club, to be shown in one 
 of the club's occasional exhibitions of rare, curious, and 
 antique books. It was a Gutenberg Bible, of which 
 seven copies are known to be in existence. Mr. Bray- 
 ton Ives has one, for instance, but he does n't keep it 
 in his pew in church. Being the first book printed 
 with movable types, he is afraid it might become a type 
 of movable books, and that he might not find it when 
 he wanted to follow the lesson for the day. 
 
 The Grolier Club, as many people know, was founded 
 in 1884 by a few gentlemen interested in such matters. 
 It is a gathering of those who love books for their ex- 
 ternal beauty for the choice quality of the paper, for 
 the graceful firmness of the type, for the even clearness 
 of the presswork, for the harmonious elegance of the 
 illustrations, and for the decorative skill bestowed on 
 the binding. Its constitution declares that "its object 
 shall be the literary study and promotion of the arts 
 pertaining to the production of books." That is to 
 say, the Grolier Club is interested in books not as lit- 
 erature but as works of art. It is with the art and 
 mystery of the book-maker, the printer, the engraver, 
 and the binder, and not with the secrets of authorship, 
 that the members of the Grolier Club concern them- 
 selves, although many of them are scholars and stu- 
 dents of literature. They are true book-lovers, and 
 not mere book-hoarders ; they are bibliophiles, not 
 bibliomaniacs ; they love a book for its intrinsic 
 beauty, they cherish a volume because of its charm- 
 ing vignettes or its vigorous presswork. Its resident 
 membership of 250 is now full. Its non-resident mem- 
 bership is spread from London to Oregon. 
 
 The club is named for Jean Grolier de Servier, Vis- 
 count d'Aguisy, Treasurer-General of France, states- 
 man and lover of books. He was born in 1476, and 
 during the eighty-six years of his life he was the friend 
 of kings and of artisans, of popes and of bookbinders. 
 He helped struggling literary men by asking them to 
 dinner and setting before them, with the medieval 
 walnuts, "gloves, in each of which was a considerable 
 sum of gold." 
 
 In his wonderful library were to be found only such 
 books as were remarkable for their literary value and 
 their beauty of form. He selected the best copies he 
 could find, and often had several copies of a book 
 printed especially for himself on fine paper, and bound 
 in the richest manner possible. The finest copy he kept 
 for himself and distributed the others among his lucky 
 friends. He had the frontispieces and the initials 
 painted in gold and in colors, and the covers were or- 
 namented by the most skilful workmen in the world. 
 He permitted himself the exquisite extravagance of 
 having new margins c irefully added to leaves which 
 had been left too short in folding, so that all the mar- 
 gins might be uniformly and exceptionally wide. Some 
 people believe that he was so generous as to consider 
 his books the "common property of his friends and 
 himself." If this be true, none of his descendants have 
 inherited his open heart. 
 
 His library was sold and scattered in 1675, and 
 books bound by Grolier and bearing his motto on the 
 side are sought for to-day by the greatest public libra- 
 ries and the richest collectors as unimpeachable treas- 
 ures. A simple octavo volume from his library has 
 
 been sold for $750. Columbia College owns examples 
 of Grolier, so does the Astor Library, and so do sev- 
 eral private collectors of this city. 
 
 Such was the amiable gentleman whom the Grolier 
 Club has taken for its patron saint. And as the lady 
 in Du Manner's picture urged her Philistine husband 
 to try and live up to the early English teapot she had 
 just bought as an, ornament for her drawing-room, so 
 does this society of enthusiastic gentlemen endeavor 
 to preserve the truest traditions of artistic book-making 
 in its own publications. Of these, perhaps the most 
 attractive up to the present time is the " Knickerbocker 
 History of New York," in two volumes, which was 
 issued from the press of De Vinne last year. 
 
 The type from which this book was printed was 
 made abroad expressly for the work, and, by the way, 
 was afterward used in printing J. S. of Dale's charm- 
 ing " Sentimental Calendar." 
 
 But the Grolier Club never rests content. It made 
 arrangements for the publication of another book, and 
 even Jean Grolier himself, should he come down, or 
 up, or out (as the reader may prefer) from his present 
 abode, andvisit64 Madison Avenue, would have to con- 
 fess that the "Philobiblon" of Richard de Bury as re- 
 printed by the Grolier Club, even in this later and more 
 careless day, is something that does really resemble a 
 book. The black-letter types are drives of punches 
 believed to have been cut in France in the first half of 
 the sixteenth century. There are rubricated initials, 
 of a full-bodied vermilion not often seen nowadays ; 
 and there is the very perfection of presswork, both 
 in impression and in register indeed, such registry 
 as this would be absolutely accidental, not to say 
 impossible, on the hand-presses of the early printers, 
 
 Richard de Bury was Bishop of Durham, and Chan- 
 cellor of England under Edward III. He collected 
 rare manuscripts, and used to gobble up all the best 
 bargains of the day, having a strong backing of both 
 church and state, and none of the other bishops could 
 boast such a library as his. But since even bishops 
 have to die, the astute prelate of Durham made the 
 drawing of his will an occasion for writing an elabor- 
 ate treatise on the value of books in general, of his own 
 in particular, and of his singular munificence in leav- 
 ing them all to the University of Oxford as the 
 foundation of a library; and the "Philobiblon" is 
 this ingenious testament. 
 
 It is written in fourteenth century Latin, which is 
 somewhat below the average Latin prose of a third- 
 term freshman at Columbia ; but he said his say with 
 pompous force, and evidently meant to floor the lazy 
 monks with the weight of his learning. It possesses 
 marked qualities of wit and strong sense, however, and 
 is probably the most valuable contemporary picture 
 extant of early fourteenth century habits and ideas. 
 
 Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College went abroad 
 to visit several foreign libraries and carefully edit the 
 various texts of the book. In 1856 only fourteen 
 manuscripts were known to exist. Prof. West has 
 dug out twenty-two more ; and all these old parchments 
 are scattered over the length and breadth of Europe. 
 He personally examined twenty-five of them. 
 
 The mechanical work on this book is also unique. 
 The type was madf in England from matrices which 
 had lain dusty for over 200 years. Its title-page and 
 initials are rubricated after the best antique models, 
 and the cover is adorned with the seal of Richard de 
 Bury. The patriotism of the club was vented upon 
 the paper, which was made here by American hands 
 from purely American rags picked under the shadow 
 of the Stars and Stripes. 
 
 In sober earnest, where but in America does a book 
 club exist that sends a scholar, at its own expense, to 
 pass months in collating the most perfect text pos- 
 sible of a book to be published for private circulation 
 in the cause of the pnnter'sand book-maker's art? 
 
 This is not a state library, it is a private club; and 
 its devotion to the "exquisite frenzy of the biblio- 
 mania" must win it the wreath one might almost 
 say the belt that goes with the ground-floor apart- 
 ments in the temple of fame. 
 
 NEW-YORK SUN. 
 
93 
 
 NONPAREIL No. 22. SOLID. 162 LINES, 1353 WORDS. 
 
 HE most useful information on the 
 subject of the preparation of manu- 
 script for the press could probably be 
 got from the conjoint evidence of 
 a publisher or publisher's taster, a 
 compositor, and a printer's reader. 
 Failing these, a few notes from one who has had 
 a somewhat varied experience as journalist and 
 editor, as well as writer of books, may not be 
 found unacceptable. 
 
 Good, clear manuscript is not only a comfort to 
 the person who has to decide upon its acceptance 
 for publication, and a convenience to the composi- 
 tor and printer's reader, but to the publisher or 
 whomever is responsible in a pecuniary sense it is 
 a great saving in the cost of production. The cost 
 of correcting the press often amounts to a fifth, and 
 even a fourth, of the cost of typographical composi- 
 tion. In the case of some authors it is a positive 
 saving, after the proofs have been revised by them, 
 to set the whole of the work over again. The print- 
 ers of Balzac's works invariably did this. To young 
 authors who desire to gain a footing with publish- 
 ers, a legible handwriting is indispensable. A popu- 
 lar author whose works are sure to be profitable 
 to a publisher can doubtless be indifferent to the 
 character of his handwriting, though whether his 
 carelessness is on any grounds justifiable is open 
 to doubt. It is an especial wrong to the composi- 
 tor in those printing-offices where the work done 
 is paid for by the piece ; nor is it fair to the pub- 
 lisher, who, in such cases, has to bear a heavy out- 
 lay for corrections. 
 
 It is on record that the two worst writers of man- 
 uscript for the " Edinburgh Review " in its earlier 
 and palmy days were Jeffrey, the editor, and his 
 most industrious contributor, Sydney Smith. The 
 latter compared his own handwriting to the hiero- 
 glyphics of a swarm of ants escaping from an ink 
 bottle, and walking over a sheet of paper without 
 wiping their legs ; and when his wife inclosed him 
 an illegible passage from one of his letters from 
 London, and asked for an interpretation, he replied 
 that "he must decline ever reading his own hand- 
 writing fpur-and-twenty hours after he had written 
 it." It is amusing to find that this owner of a 
 wretched caligraphy was compelled to ask Jeffrey 
 to dictate his letters and not write them himself. 
 Referring to one of Jeffrey's epistles, he says : "I 
 have tried to read it from right to left, and Mrs. 
 Sydney from left to right, and we can neither of 
 us decipher a single word." The printers had to 
 guess their way through Jeffrey's manuscript. 
 Lord Cockburn complained of his illegible hand, 
 and of his aversion to new paragraphs, and says 
 that he wrote whole volumes, and even an entire 
 play, with the full complement of acts and scenes, 
 without a new line. 
 
 The manuscripts of both Wordsworth and Byron 
 were almost illegible, and the revision of their 
 proofs was a work of immense labor. Byron made 
 a fearful mess of his proofs, scrawling corrections 
 on the margins till Murray and his printers were 
 almost driven out of their senses. His additions 
 were generally greater than the original text. The 
 "Giaour," for example, as sent to the printer, con- 
 tained 400 lines. A thousand more were added in 
 the proof. Sir Walter Scott's proofs, again, were a 
 terror to his printers. Dr. Lardner states that the 
 MS. of the " History of Scotland " was full of slips, 
 of incomplete sentences, of repetitions, bad gram- 
 mar, and clumsiness, so that when it came to be 
 corrected in proof, the printers had a prolonged 
 and complicated task. The doctor, therefore, had 
 the rest of the copy rewritten by a competent clerk, 
 "to make it read," before it was given to the com- 
 positors. It is reported that the Laureate has 
 for a long time adopted the practice of having his 
 poems set up in type, and he corrects and rear- 
 ranges them at leisure a plan which is only pos- 
 sible, as a rule, in the case of a rich and indulgent 
 
 publisher or a magnate in the world of letters. 
 Macaulay 's first drafts were written in a small hand, 
 with many interlineations and erasures ; but he 
 always wrote out the whole for the press in a large 
 and perfectly clear hand. Doubtless many authors 
 do the same, but the mechanical work of copying 
 is a drudgery which others absolutely decline to 
 undertake. Cowper could not have been a very 
 good penman, for he wrote to Lady Hesketh re- 
 garding one of his poems that had been published 
 in the " Gentleman's Magazine " : " It is enough to 
 craze a poor poet to see his verses so miserably 
 misprinted, and, which is worse if possible, his 
 very praises in a manner annihilated by a jumble 
 of the lines out of their places, so that in two 
 instances the end of the period takes the lead of 
 the beginning of it." Cowper's Memoirs, too, 
 were apparently printed from an ill-written MS. 
 Of this there is a whimsical proof where the 
 Persian Letters of Montesquieu are spoken of, and 
 the compositor, unable to decipher that author's 
 name, converted it into "Mules Quince"! 
 
 This wretched scrawling might well be called the 
 "whichever you please" style, something as Rus- 
 kin has cleverly noticed scratchy drawing and paint- 
 ing. "If there were a creature in the foreground 
 of a picture," says he, "of which he could not de- 
 cide whether it were a pony or a pig, the critic 
 would probably affirm it to be a generalization of 
 pony and pig, and consequently a high example 
 of 'harmonious union and simple effect.' But I 
 should call it simple bad drawing." 
 
 There are differences in the right mode of pre- 
 paring the manuscript of a book and the copy in- 
 tended for a newspaper, but one practical require- 
 ment is the same in both cases. The manuscript 
 must occupy one side of the page only. The chief 
 reasons for this are, first, to enable the author to 
 make additions on the opposite page, or at the 
 back of the page, and, second, to facilitate the 
 work of the compositor. Copy for newspapers or 
 the periodical press should not entirely cover the 
 sheet. A margin should be left at the top of each 
 page or slip, and another down the left-hand side. 
 These are necessary for the marks which the edi- 
 tor may deem it necessary to make for the guid- 
 ance of the printer. All proper names and unusual 
 and foreign words should be written with careful 
 distinctness, as near like print as possible. Es- 
 pecially is this requisite in cases where the author 
 is not likely to have a proof for revision, as in most 
 newspaper work. 
 
 Apart from the question of handwriting which, 
 of course, is all-important there are two things 
 which many regular writers and still more occa- 
 sional or infrequent writers for the press neglect : 
 punctuation and paragraphing. These may be 
 thought to be indifferent matters, but they are not 
 so. The sense frequently depends upon accurate 
 punctuation ; and if the work makes any preten- 
 sions to style, nicety of pointing is indispensable. 
 Paragraphing, again, is an art in its way, which 
 appears to be little studied. Articles of a couple 
 of columns in length are not infrequently written 
 without a single break, and, on the other hand, 
 there are some writers who make a paragraph of 
 every sentence. It is hard to say which is the 
 more distressing. 
 
 Study the make-up of your book as you study the 
 architecture of your house. Have all your plans 
 legible and neatly laid put, so that the builders of 
 books as well as the builders of houses may not be 
 obliged to hesitate in uncertainty. Many times 
 the reading of a book has made the fortune of a 
 man, has decided his way of life. It makes friends, 
 it awakens responsive feelings in strangers, it is 
 a tie between men who have been delighted with 
 the same book. Dr. Johnson, hearing of a man 
 who had reveled in Burton's "Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly," said, "If I had known that I should have 
 hugged him." 
 
 J. H. NODAL, in "Manchester Quarterly." 
 
94 
 NONPAREIL No. 20. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 134 LINES, 1199 WORDS. 
 
 O one who has lived for years in compan- 
 ionship with the old masters of the art 
 of wood-engraving can look with com- 
 placency on the boasts of modern wood- 
 engravers that they have brought that 
 art to such perfection that they are en- 
 titled to be regarded as its masters. Nor is it fair in 
 the history of Art to allow the statement to continue 
 unchallenged before the world that the art which 
 now furnishes a large part of the illustration of our 
 magazines and periodicals is that old art whose 
 triumphs are famous. 
 
 Let us begin at the beginning. Babylonian seals, 
 four thousand years ago, impressed signatures on writ- 
 ten documents. Men wrote in those days and in that 
 country with the corner of a style which had a rectan- 
 gular end, and the corner made cuneiform, wedge- 
 shaped, impressions in clay tablets, they using clay as 
 we use paper. The seal was then a cylinder, to be 
 rolled over the clay. It was the first roller printing- 
 press, and it printed letters, and pictures of men and 
 of gods. The art of thus printing pictures from en- 
 graved surfaces was used, with color, in later times. 
 We have no specimens of color-printing, but we have 
 some Roman stamps for printing, and these suffice to 
 prove the survival of the art down to the fifteenth 
 century after Christ. In the early fifteenth century 
 (if not in the thirteenth and fourteenth, as is pos- 
 sible) there were in Europe, especially in Germany, so 
 many men employed in cutting stamps of wood, with 
 which to print color, that guilds of form-schneiders, 
 model-cutters, existed. The stamps were used to print 
 patterns on playing-cards, as we know by specimens. 
 I have a few before me as I write. It is probable also 
 that they were used to print forms for religious pictures. 
 In all cases the stamp only printed a form, which was 
 afterward filled out with colors by hand. 
 
 The oldest specimen we have of a form for a picture 
 printed from a wood block (except on playing-cards) 
 is a St. Christopher, which bears the date 1423. Per- 
 haps it is, perhaps it is not, the date of the work. 
 About that time such prints were known, and not long 
 after became common. Many were made, as was the 
 St. Christopher, with legends cut on the block to be 
 printed. So the art of printing words and sentences 
 and pages, from woodcut blocks, came into use, and 
 then Gutenberg, not long after 1450, seized the idea 
 of separately cut letters, which could be "set up" 
 namely, what we call type and so printing with 
 movable type came. 
 
 Printing was only a method of rapid writing. So 
 its inventor regarded it. The early printed books 
 were fac-similes of manuscripts. It had been common 
 to ornament manuscripts by painting the initials of 
 chapters and sections in large and ornamental letters. 
 So in printed books blanks were left wherein the owner 
 could have such letters painted by hand. Soon, how- 
 ever, some few engraved initial letters began to be 
 printed, notably in the great psalter of Fust and 
 Schoeffer of 1457. Manuscripts had been ornamented 
 with border designs. The printers began to have these 
 ornaments cut on blocks and printed them in books. 
 I have no earlier example of this than in the Durandus 
 by Zainer of 1475, in which the outline of a vine runs 
 up the margin of the first folio, printed from a wood 
 block and afterward painted by hand. Manuscripts 
 had been ornamented with pictures, most commonly 
 
 little pictures set in the manuscript. The form-schnei- 
 ders began about 1465 to furnish the printers with 
 blocks on which they had cut the forms, outline 
 sketches of pictures to be printed in the book. These 
 were afterward to be painted in colors by artists, who 
 made a business of thus ornamenting books. An im- 
 mense number of books were printed before 1490 con- 
 taining pictures of this sort. At the same time the 
 form-schneiders continued to cut blocks for printing 
 outlines of religious pictures which monks and others 
 finished in colors. 
 
 Up to 1490 that art which we have known as the 
 art of wood-engraving cannot be said to have existed. 
 The art which made the blocks for the pictures and 
 books we have spoken of was no advance on the seal 
 cutting of the early Babylonians. Nor was it an art 
 capable of any advance, since it was mere form cutting, 
 its purpose being mainly to enable those who painted 
 pictures to produce many copies of the same picture 
 in cheap style. In books it made all copies of the book 
 alike. No known artist of the fifteenth century had 
 used the art to publish his pictures. 
 
 But the important fact is that up to 1490 the art had 
 never produced a picture. The purpose of the art was 
 to produce colored pictures, not printed pictures. It 
 printed only plans for pictures, and no picture printed 
 from a wood block was complete till the painter had 
 painted it in colors. Nor in the middle of the century . 
 did the general public know anything about pictures 
 in black lines on white paper. They knew only col- 
 ored pictures. 
 
 Now came into the world Albert Diirer. He was 
 living in Nuremberg with his wife Agnes. He was a 
 young artist of deep thought, full of desire to make 
 his art a teacher of his age. I have imagined his 
 course of thought. The great printing-office of his 
 godfather Koburger, in Nuremberg, was thundering 
 day after day. He heard it, and said to himself and 
 to Agnes: "Not a great while ago my friends, and 
 the great men of the day, who teach and preach by 
 word of mouth, could only reach men by a manuscript 
 and their voices. Now this great art of printing mul- 
 tiplies their manuscripts so that they become a thou- 
 sand teaching and preaching voices. But I, I who am 
 also a teacher of great truths, I can only paint a pic- 
 ture, and speak through it to the few who see it. How 
 can I write lessons in pictures and multiply them as 
 manuscripts are multiplied? How can I, an artist, 
 use the printing-press to reach the people far and 
 near?" 
 
 At length he struck the idea. "These form-schnei- 
 ders can cut wood blocks to print rude outline forms 
 for painters. Why should not I draw a complete pic- 
 ture on a wood block and cut it myself, or teach Jer- 
 ome the form-schneider or some one else how to cut it, 
 then print it for the people?" 
 
 So he made his first picture on a wood block, and 
 he or a form-schneider under his eye cut it, and he 
 printed the picture, and the art of wood-engraving 
 blazed on the world. It enlightened Europe. Its 
 power fully equaled the power of Gutenberg's art of 
 printing words with movable type. I have said else- 
 where and repeat that Martin Luther and Philip 
 Melancthon would have talked to a dead Germany if 
 Albert Diirer had not preceded them, and his new art, 
 in such hands as those of Lucas Cranach, accompanied 
 them. 
 
 WM. C. PRIME. 
 
95 
 
 NONPAREIL No. 22. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 134 LINES, 1147 WORDS. 
 
 HE essence of the art of wood-engrav- 
 ing, invented by Albert Durer, was 
 just this, that by this means the art- 
 ist was enabled to reach the people 
 through the printing-press. 
 No artist had ever before dreamed of possessing 
 such power, such broad fields of influence and 
 popularity, as Durer's art now placed in his grasp. 
 For a hundred years the art was a mighty weapon 
 for good in the world. 
 
 Instantly upon its invention by Durer a large 
 number of artists seized on it as a means of direct 
 communication with the people. Those who have 
 not seen the works of such men have no idea what 
 they were. The woodcut pictures of Durer, Burg- 
 mair, Schauffelin, Cranac, Baldung-Grun, and other 
 eminent artists are well known to collectors. Few 
 except collectors ever see them. Modern artists 
 are not acquainted with them as they should be. 
 They are of all sizes. The "Triumphal Arch" by 
 Diirer consists of a large number of prints on sepa- 
 rate sheets, which when brought together make a 
 wood print as large as the end of a small room. The 
 "Triumph" by Burgmair, in like manner on differ- 
 ent blocks, would require so long a space to hold 
 the print when brought together, that probably no 
 one has ever attempted it. It is known only in a 
 large oblong volume. The "Raising of Lazarus" 
 and "The Last Supper," both by Schauffelin, are 
 prints three feet four inches long by nearly two feet 
 six inches high. The products of the art, from such 
 grand works down to the smallest pictures by Hans 
 Sebald Beham and Hans Lutzelburger, and those 
 attributed to Holbein, are not alone beautiful works 
 and great works, but they are of inestimable value 
 because they are, each and every one, the work of 
 a renowned artist ; his own work, printed from the 
 lines made by his own pencil in his own hand. 
 
 The form-schneider had now become what we 
 call a wood-engraver, although in Germany he re- 
 tained his ancient name. The process in the art 
 was simple. The artist drew his picture on the 
 flat surface of the block. The engraver's business 
 was to cut away every particle of the wood which 
 the artist's pencil had not touched. The engraver 
 never left a line of his own. That would be tam- 
 pering with the artist's work. What value does 
 any one place on a work of Durer, translated into 
 a black print by a drawing of some one else? There 
 are plenty of such prints, made "after Durer," 
 which are of no account in comparison with an 
 original by Durer. 
 
 Thus it was that by the art of wood-engraving 
 artists were enabled to use the printing-press to 
 disseminate their own ideas, precisely as authors 
 used it for their pamphlets and books. And a pic- 
 ture is written language always, as verily as is a 
 printed page. 
 
 In our day wood-engraving, as we know it in 
 connection with the great artists of the sixteenth 
 century, seems to be a lost art. The new art now 
 called wood- en graving, has sprung from the ambi- 
 tion, laudable indeed, of the form-schneider of old 
 time to be an artist. He has sought to do on wood, 
 with the ordinary printing-press, what the copper- 
 plate engraver does on copper and steel produce 
 copies of the works of artists. His pictures are 
 
 his own drawings, not those of the artist. His work 
 is exquisite in execution, his skill wonderful. A 
 new style of picture in magazines and newspapers 
 and books is the result. Some of these, when proof 
 impressions are taken by hand with great care and 
 proper distribution of pressure, have considerable 
 resemblance to the best India-ink work by artists. 
 The misfortune of the new art is that printers' ink 
 and printing-presses will hardly ever produce two 
 impressions of the same block exactly alike, and 
 will not give effect to what we call "color," even 
 in a black print. Hence the monotonous effect of 
 so many modern wood-engravings. But I do not 
 write to discuss the merit of the modern art or its 
 products. My purpose is only to direct attention 
 to the fact that great .artists no longer use the 
 printing-press as their means of reaching the peo- 
 ple. They are content to be translated into the 
 productions of the engraver's art. With the ut- 
 most consideration for this new art and its powers, 
 it is undeniable that its translations are sometimes 
 fearful libels on the original artists. Not long ago 
 a friend laid on my table a proof impression of a 
 modern wood-engraving presented to him for 
 what it was a specimen of the highest attain- 
 ment in the modern art. When his back was 
 turned I laid a sheet of paper over the middle, 
 leaving top and bottom exposed. Then I called 
 his attention to the work in the visible upper 
 part, asking him what it represented. He said 
 "clouds and sky; pretty well done too." I took 
 off the paper and he saw that the print was 
 turned upside down and that his clouds "pretty 
 well done" were in truth the foreground of the 
 picture a grass-covered meadow through which 
 wound a path. 
 
 It is possible, though I am not able to affirm it, 
 that artists can no longer find form-schneiders of 
 skill who will do the servile work of following lines 
 drawn on the wood. If so, then the old art is lost, 
 and the loss to the world is inestimable. In every 
 artist's studio are more or less of his sketches, done 
 in pencil in line work. Sometimes they are in pen 
 and ink. These sketches, as all students and lovers 
 of art know, are in great measure the very bone 
 and muscle, the anatomy of beautiful works in 
 color. They are full of instruction and value. 
 Every line is valuable, and the addition of one 
 line would destroy the purity and originality of 
 the work. Once, if the artist made such sketches 
 on wood, they were reproduced by printing and 
 the world of art was enriched. It is so no longer. 
 Pretty much all that we know of our great artists 
 now, nearly all the instruction we receive from 
 them, is by their paintings, most of which go 
 into private houses, and by translations, always 
 feeble, often false. Those artists who consent to 
 draw on wood, many of them men of power, seem 
 content to be translated. Now and then in a mag- 
 azine or book some little cut, evidently engraved 
 on the lines of the artist, shines out with wonder- 
 ful brilliance, and people wonder why that small 
 cut with its few lines so impresses them. It is 
 because these are the last glimmerings of the 
 art which was the illumination far more than 
 painting or sculpture of Europe in the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 WM. C. PRIME. 
 
9 6 
 NONPAREIL No. 15. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 134 LINES, 1065 WORDS.' 
 
 n- IGH Dier Cyrrh: Eybowt phiphty 
 
 HBP* yeers agough, eye enterteigned vews 
 
 ^ oph thee aurthograficle kweschun 
 
 BJBDJK| kwight cymilre two yewrs. Mower 
 
 : rhescentleigh ai hav rephlected ohn 
 
 jjk, thea psubjikt ay gould diel, aimed 
 
 naph scene raezen too chainj my 
 
 ohpinyuns. Uy hav dyskuvered thath they karach- 
 
 turistiks oph hour Inggliesh awerthograiphcigh whitch 
 
 yough kaul phaltz arr rheallee merritz. Yew psaa ey 
 
 sownd shood haph butte wun rheprhezentativ ; buth, 
 
 ei asch yue, iz naut anne aurthografikle cystim chon- 
 
 structid onne thaphth pryncipal ay contemtibul appharc 
 
 buy thae cyde oph won in whitch epheree sownd has 
 
 twentie rheprezenthathiphs ! Yough kumplein uv 
 
 psighlent leththerz. Inn yewer igknowrunts, yeu 
 
 phale to purseeve thatte wie haph know cylunt letters. 
 
 Awl thoughs whitch ue kawl sough arr mierleigh kom- 
 
 pownunt parrhts oph buy-littorhal, or try-littorhal, or 
 
 multigh-littorhal karrhackturz yewzd too denought 
 
 cympal vokle elemence. Two illustraight. Thayp iz 
 
 ay vokle elemunt kommunlcy reprhezentid by thae 
 
 karuktur . Butte thysse iz ekwallie rheprhezcntid 
 
 buy ue, eu, ew, ui, ugh, ough, etc., etc. Aynuther 
 
 iz rheprhezentid buy // butte yt haz az ekwiphay- 
 
 lunts th (az inn thy me) ^ tw (az inn two),phth (az 
 
 inn phthisic) . Ai thurd, rheprezentid buy_/", haz atte 
 
 leeste won buy-littorhal ekwivaylent,^/*. 
 
 Nou appligh theeze principuls too thie spellynge oph 
 ai wurred kombigning awl theighr phokle elemense, 
 anned knowtiss thoe bewtiphul varhietee they opphur 
 two ower chawiss. Wee maigh haphfreivt, offruet, 
 frughth, or phriewth, or phroughphth. Inn vue 
 ov possighbbilitiez souch az theeze, whitch cy dough 
 naut preethend tou eggsaust, amme ei naut jous- 
 typhyde inn saighing, " Hcer's writchness" f 
 
 Theigh pholt ov ower awrthaugraighfee iz not, az 
 eu klaym, thacht ite haz too menny rheprhezeutha- 
 tiphz phaur thee saim psownd ; ite iz phthath itt kon- 
 phinz eech souch phsownd reprhesenphthayphthiph too 
 ay gnarroe wreinj oph yewse. Iph, ohn thie uther 
 banned, aul theaz eekwivalenth psownd reprcighsenn- 
 taighthiphz wur maid inndyskrimineightleigh intur- 
 chainjaybul, aigh paighg oph Ingleish wood preazent 
 ai vayrheed anned piktewrhesk eppieranse, troughleigh 
 pliezing tou ey kaurrhekth thaisphth. Hwot iz beth- 
 thur, thair kood bee inn souch ai cystim know psoch 
 thyng az bachd spealling ay sirkumstants inphinit- 
 leigh konsouling two theigh moulthithewds hoo nou 
 auphthen undurgough untolled agguniz yn eapisthol- 
 ayrie kompozishun, bekaws, lyche Pinkee Rhosebucide 
 inn thee "Senturie Magayzeen," theigh kahnt rhe- 
 membyrrh wheather itt shood bee ei aur ie ; phaur, 
 yew cee, ytt wood be boath. 
 
 Gnor wood thee benniphitz deryvde frum thisce 
 scympliphikashun uv hour methhodds of spellyng bee 
 konphinde too theigh righters oph letturz. Printterz 
 andde publischers wood fynd phthemselphes mutch yn- 
 debtebd, pschaughthanned prowphessors wood ak- 
 noleidje freight ascisthar.se, anned skughlteitcherz wud 
 haph knoughthynge two dough. That phthisz wood 
 beigh begnefischul noughboddeigh wood deneie. 
 
 Sough, cyrrh, iph igh ephphur undertaik tou wrhee- 
 phawrm hour speillingue, ai shagl doo soe buy 
 thacheing aigh deepahrtewer inn theigh dyrheckshun 
 deyametrikkully oppoughzit too ewers. 
 
 Pherry trewlie yure ohbedyunt psurphunt, 
 
 F. A. P. BAHRKNAHRU. 
 
 No reasonable man questions that a sweeping change 
 of English spelling will be a great trial to the genera- 
 tions who have to make it ; that it can only come about 
 as the result of a period of anarchy, and will involve a 
 breaking, to a certain extent, with the past a past 
 on the side of which are ranged a great host of asso- 
 ciations and a still greater one of prejudices. The re- 
 form will cost, as reforms of long abuses are wont to 
 do, a heavy price. And the greatest difficulty will 
 be to convince the generation which has to pay the 
 bulk of this price that the reform is worth what 
 it costs. 
 
 There is not sufficient force in the consideration that 
 a phonetic spelling is truer, that it realizes the ideal of 
 a mode of writing, that its adoption aids the record of 
 the history of the language, and so on. These are well 
 enough, but they are nothing to fight for. They are 
 not half so efficacious before the mind of the general 
 speller as is his attachment to what he is accustomed to. 
 They do not weigh with the average scholar against the 
 satisfaction he takes in understanding better than his 
 less instructed neighbor a thing which both of them 
 alike have to use for this is what his plea of the value 
 of a "historical spelling" to the comprehension of 
 the language really means. Neville and Scroggs both 
 write doubt and debt; but Neville's knowledge why 
 there is a b in these words is almost as good to him as 
 a decoration. Nor is there anything really effective in 
 the possible saving of time and space by dropping out 
 a parcel of silent letters. Idle rogues they are, to be 
 sure, that well deserve to be sent packing. There will 
 be some satisfaction in giving them their dues, but the 
 gain will not be great. 
 
 All these things smack of sentimentality, and can be 
 met and neutralized by the opposing sentimentalities. 
 Writing is a purely practical art ; it was devised for 
 practical ends, and its history has been governed and 
 directed by such, from the initial stage of picture- 
 making and hieroglyphics down to the perfected pho- 
 netic alphabet, representing sounds only and sounds 
 consistently, in which it has finally issued. And it 
 plainly must be a purely practical consideration that 
 is to give the new turn to the history of English orthog- 
 raphy. 
 
 Now we have such a dominant, practical consideration, 
 and it is this: The immense waste of time and effort 
 involved in learning the present orthography. It is the 
 generations of children to come who appeal to us to save 
 them from the affliction which we have endured and 
 forgotten. It has been calculated over and over again 
 how many years are, on an average, thrown away in the 
 education of every child, in memorizing that intricate 
 tangle of rules and exceptions which constitutes Eng- 
 lish so-called orthography, and how many millions of 
 money are wasted in the process on each generation; 
 and it has been pointed out how imperfect after all is 
 the result reached ; how many learners never get out of 
 the stage of trying to learn to spell ; how much easier a 
 better result could be attained with less trouble ; how 
 much more generally the first step in education read- 
 ing could be successfully taken, if we had a purely 
 phonetic way of writing. Yet little improvement seems 
 to have been made. 
 
 How many grow puzzle-headed over this dreadful 
 difficulty at the outset, and lose courage and inclina- 
 tion to go further, perhaps even teachers do not fully 
 realize. 
 
 W. D. WHITNEY, Yale College. 
 
97 
 NONPAREIL LIGHT FACE. DOUIILE LEADED. 48 LINES, 628 WORDS. 
 
 HE present mania for big books and limited editions will un- 
 doubtedly wear itself out in time ; already there are signs that 
 the genuine reader is becoming weary of buying his literature 
 by weight. At first, there is a certain pleasure in owning a "tall 
 copy," no matter how useless its contents; and the pleasure is 
 increased when we are assured that only a couple of hundred 
 other people can possibly possess the same book in the same form. But the 
 joy is not forever. A book is not any the more readable or enjoyable because 
 it can have only a few readers, and even the luxury of wide margin and extra 
 binding is sometimes doubtful in taste and incontestably detrimental to real, 
 profitable study, for it must be handled with great care. 
 
 Although the First Editions were frequently printed from corrupt manu- 
 scripts, written by ignorant copyists and ignorant correctors and printers, 
 yet the modern editions de luxe, despite the care and cost devoted to them, 
 are somehow failures when compared with the old tall copies. The Foulis 
 Virgil of 1778, to take a late and well-known example, is a pleasure to look 
 at, and even (in moments of physical vigor) to read. Its fine, clear type fits 
 its page, its margins are not out of proportion, and the two volumes are not 
 so thick as to be unwieldy or break their backs. There is a harmony about, the 
 whole work which satisfies the taste. In our modern large editions, we go on 
 a different and, as we think, a very inferior principle. A fine edition now 
 means putting a splash of small ignoble type in the middle of a staring expanse 
 of white paper paper, as a rule, dignified with the title of " hand-made," on 
 the strength of its being too thick and stiff to turn over properly or lie flat, as 
 it should. We heap these buckram pages together till they make a clumsy vol- 
 ume, which we put into a white vellum or parchment or calico binding that 
 soils with the slightest touch; we scrawl some glaring inscription over the 
 sides, and call the result an "edition de luxe"! Artistically, the thing is a 
 mistake. The letterpress should fit the page, in spite of all we have heard of 
 the "neat rivulet of text meandering through a meadow of margin" ; and there 
 can be no doubt that though margins there must be and good margins, too 
 they must be in strict proportion to the size of the page. Too much margin, 
 though better than too little, is still a fault, and in this, as in everything else, 
 " est modus." But a grave error is the modern custom of putting small type in 
 big pages, and trusting to the wide margins to make amends. The type as well 
 as the margin must be proportioned to the page, and big books ought to be in 
 big type. As it is, we fail to see the beauty or the use of such monster volumes 
 as are now the fashion. It is all very well to have a fine large edition of the 
 great English classics like those of Fielding and Thackeray recently pub- 
 lished. Such volumes form an appropriate mural decoration for " every 
 English gentleman's library," as the conventional country-house smoking- 
 room is called ; but if we want to read and profit by our classical authors, we 
 shall probably turn to some more portable edition. 
 
 "Whenever one sees a specimen of these unreasonably huge tomes one is 
 reminded of the story of the house that was seemingly irretrievably on fire, 
 until the flames, coming in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the 
 Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over this joint barrier and sank 
 defeated. 
 
 SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
9 8 
 
 NONPAREIL No. 20. LEADED. 60 LINES, 1132 WORDS. 
 
 THE operations of paper making, as they succeed each other, are as follows: The rags are 
 washed, if requisite, and then sorted. They are bleached to render them white, but this is 
 sometimes deterred to another stage of the process. They are ground with water, in the 
 washing-engine, till they are reduced to a coarse or imperfect pulp, called half-stuff, in 
 which state the bleaching is sometimes performed; at other times it is bleached in the 
 engine. The half-stuff is ground in the beating engine, and water added in sufficient 
 quantity to make a fine pulp, which, being conveyed to the vat, the sheets of paper are 
 made by taking up a quantity of the pulp upon a mold of fine wire cloth, through which the water drains 
 away, and the pulp coagulates into a sheet of paper; to take this off the wire is called couching. This sheet 
 is put in a pile with many others, with a felt between each, and the whole is subjected to a strong pressure to 
 press out the superfluous water. The sheets are taken out, the felts removed, and the sheets of paper pressed 
 again by themselves for a certain time. The sheets are taken from the press and hung up, five or six together, 
 to dry in the drying-loft. The paper is dipped into a tub of fine size, and pressed to force out the superfluity, 
 after which it is dried again ; but in printing papers this process is rendered unnecessary by sizing the stuff 
 while in the engine, by adding certain ingredients. The paper now undergoes an examination of each indi- 
 vidual sheet, and all knots and burs are removed, and bad sheets taken out, forming the casse and retree. 
 The dry sheets are packed in a very large pile, and pressed with immense force to render the sheets flat 
 and smooth. The paper is taken out, parted, and pressed again. "Parting" means to take down the pile 
 sheet by sheet, and make another without turning -the sheet over; by that means new surfaces are brought in 
 contact with each other, and the surface of the paper is improved. The paper is now finished, and is counted 
 into quires, folded (where folding is required), and packed up in reams for market. 
 
 The linen rags used for paper making are of five qualities, denominated Nos. i, 2, 3, 4 and 5, according to 
 grade; No. i, superfine, being all linen, the remains of fine cloth, which, not being so much worn as the 
 coarser sort, is used for making the finest paper. No. 5 is coarse canvas, which, by bleaching, may be 
 brought to a good color, but will not make paper of the strength and fineness of the finer grades. The next 
 sort is rag bagging, a poorer canvas, of which the bags are made for packing rags. Colored rags are gen- 
 erally cotton of all colors, except blue, which is selected for making blue paper only. Superfine paper for 
 writing or fine printing can only be made from Nos. i, 2, and 3; Nos. 4 and 5 are appropriate for making an 
 inferior paper called news, because used for newspapers. Colored rags are only used for inferior papers. Woolen 
 and silk rags are used for brown paper, but, even for this purpose, they require a mixture of a better grade of 
 rags. Old paper may also serve for the same purpose, but the waste is considerable. It is reserved in some 
 places for the manufacture of pasteboard, which material is worked in less time, with less force, and with the 
 same water. It will also lose much less. Besides, paper that has been once sized, though passed through 
 boiling water, still gives the pulp a viscidity which ought to be guarded against. 
 
 The rags, when first brought to the mill, if they are very dirty, as the coarse sorts generally are, are washed 
 in hot water by a fulling mill, such as is used by dyers for washing cloth. The rags being well dried, are (if 
 they have not been previously sorted by the rag merchant) delivered to be sorted and scraped. This work is 
 usually given to women. These women are disposed of in a large room full of old linen, seated two by two, 
 on benches, with a large chest or box divided into five cases before them, for containing the five different sorts 
 of rags as before mentioned. Each has a piece of pasteboard hung from her girdle and extended on her knees, 
 upon which, with a long, sharp knife, she unrips seams and stitches, and scrapes off all filth. Whatever can 
 be used after being well shaken is distributed into the three cases, according to the degree of fineness, and the 
 women throw the rest at their feet. Those manufacturers who choose to be more exact in their sorting have 
 six cases for different sorts of rags: the superfine, the fine, the seams and stitches of the fine, the middling, 
 the seams and stitches of the middling, and the coarse, without including the very coarse parts. 
 
 Some manufacturers are persuaded that the labor of the sorters is never sufficiently exact, and think that the 
 hems and seams should be kept apart ; that the coarseness of the cloth should be considered, and that the 
 cloth made of tow should be separated from that made of longer slips, cloth of hemp from cloth of flax; and, 
 lastly, that the degree of wearing in the cloth should be attended to ; for, if rags which are almost new should 
 be mixed with those that are much worn, the one will not be reduced to a pulp in the mill, while the other will 
 be so attenuated as to be carried away by the water and pass through the hair strainer, and hence there must 
 be a considerable waste in the work, a real loss to the manufacturer and even to the beauty of the paper. 
 
 This is not all, for th;: pulp of uneven temerity produces those cloudy papers wherein are seen, by inter- 
 vals, parts more or less clear and more or less weak, occasioned by the flakes assembled on the mold in mak- 
 ing, the paper not being sufficiently tempered and diluted to incorporate with the more fluid parts. 
 
 It would, therefore, be very advisable to have the different qualities of the cloths milled separately, and 
 also the hems and threads of the stitching; because sewing thread, being never so much worn as that of the 
 cloth, and being not so easy to be reduced, forms filaments in the paper. This great precaution in the serv- 
 ing of rags is, of course, very expensive; but there is no doubt of its producing a total difference in the beauty 
 of the paper, without hurting its goodness. 
 
99 
 NONPAREIL No. 22. LEADED. 60 LINES, 1087 WORDS. 
 
 HE question how a book shall be bound is not one which may be successfully decided 
 out of hand by any one who has never thought at all about the matter. True, color 
 and gilding and design have a certain value irrespective of fitness, but when we find 
 that fitness has been violated, the object itself becomes, at least to a certain degree, 
 offensive. The first requisite in the binding of a book is, of course, that the book 
 shall be well protected and shall be easily and comfortably usable. A book bound 
 so that it cannot be easily opened, or so that when opened and read its leaves work 
 loose and are cast out, or so that it becomes uncomfortably heavy, or with excrescences upon it, in the 
 way of metal or other knobs, or deep leather panels, is an absurdity and a nuisance. It had better been 
 left in pasteboard or in paper. But supposing this part of the work well done, there remains the ques- 
 tion, all important from the decorative art point of view, of the fitness of the binding and the ornaments 
 put upon it. The style of binding in which books do too often appear makes it manifest that to most 
 persons, and even to most binders, this question of fitness does not occur. And yet it is important, and 
 would seem almost obvious. Crushed levant morocco, crimson, blue, yellow, or olive, with gilt edges 
 for the leaves, is a very handsome and a most durable style of binding ; but it is not fit for all books. 
 What taste could be so dull and indiscriminating as not to be offended by seeing a ledger or a day-book 
 so bound, or a city directory, or a dictionary ! If this be admitted, all is admitted ; for the question of 
 fitness is then recognized, and, consistently, the rule of fitness must, within reasonable limits, be fol- 
 lowed. It is on this ground of fitness that the contempt of the great French binders for any other ma- 
 terial than levant morocco is an artistic fault ; and, as to the result, it leads them to bind books in this 
 style which are almost as much out of place in their rich and elaborate dresses as a ring of gold in 
 a swine's snout. Some of their best bindings are positively displeasing on this account. 
 
 How, then, shall books be bound fitly, beautifully, and so as to please the eye of taste which looks be- 
 yond mere surface ? In the first place, before we get to the outside of the book, and after, as we sup- 
 pose, the leaves are well put together, the margins should not be cut down. Margin is as important 
 in binding books as in calculating expenses or in buying stocks. A book with its margins cut down 
 will be a mean-looking book if it is bound in gold ; and yet so rabid are most binders about cutting 
 down margins that to preserve the little shred of paper it is almost necessary to stand over them with 
 a drawn sword. As to the cover and decoration of a book, that should be decided by the character of 
 its contents, and by the use to which it is to be put. Books of reference, dictionaries, encyclopedias, 
 hand-books, text-books, and the like should be strongly bound in calf, or in very dark morocco, without 
 ornament of any kind, and all the edges should be cut and either marbled or speckled. They are arti- 
 cles merely of use, and ornament upon them is offensively out of place. You might as well gild a 
 boot-jack. Next come books of a sober and solid cast, histories, travels, scientific works, and the like. 
 These are appropriately bound in handsome calf, with gilded backs and marbled edges. Much orna- 
 ment and gilt edges are inconsistent with the sobriety of their character, and also with the fact that 
 when read they are held long in the hand and subjected to a somewhat trying usage. Gilding, however, 
 preserves the back of a book, and the polishing of the edges for the marbling presents a surface into 
 which dust cannot penetrate. When we come to poetry, belles-lettres, books on art, and those in which 
 their illustrations are a very important part of their attraction, we reach the proper region of morocco 
 and gilding. Poetry is to a certain degree out of place in calf. For tree-stained calf there has been 
 a craze among certain book-lovers, and they have even put Shakspere and Spenser and Chaucer and 
 Browning into that dress a fault of incongruity, in our judgment. All this class of books that is, 
 poetry, belles-lettres, and books on art should be honored with morocco and decoration to the extent of 
 the owner's ability and willingness to pay for them ; otherwise they may be much better left in their native 
 cloth or board binding. There may be even a fitness of color and decoration to the author. For example, 
 Shakspere in a dozen volumes would not appear well in yellow or light-blue morocco ; but such a dress 
 would well befit a single volume of songs or some quaint old rarity of not too grave a cast. Upon one 
 point the book-bindee should be careful, in regard to this class of books : only the top edge should be 
 cut and gilt ; the margin on the fore and bottom edges should be left untouched. To shave them smooth 
 is abominable in the eyes of all real book-lovers. Works upon art, illustrated books, and the like, which 
 are often large, may well be bound in half-morocco, with the top edges gilt. This is a serviceable as 
 well as an appropriate and handsome binding. It is always to be remembered that morocco is the most 
 lasting and flexible material in which a book can be bound. Russia leather is a delusion and a snare. 
 It becomes dry, cracks at the hinges, and looks shabby. Vellum is to be used sparingly and with great 
 discretion for special purposes. These general rules will be a safe guide to the book-lover who is will- 
 ing to spend some money on his favorites. If he does not violate them, his books will be a delight to the 
 eye as well as food for the mind. But prettily as books are now bound in muslin, if they are carefully 
 used and tastefully arranged, they may be made great helps to the attractive appearance of the living 
 parlor of a refined household. 
 
 NEW-YORK TIMES. 
 
IOO 
 
 AGATE No. 13. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 
 72 LINES, 569 WORDS. 
 
 AGATE No. 12. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 
 72 LINES, 599 WORDS. 
 
 AMUEL WOOD WORTH, the 
 author of "The Old Oaken 
 Bucket," was born in Scit- 
 uate, Mass., January 13, 
 1785. He has been called the 
 American Goldsmith. He be- 
 gan to write poetry when 
 only about fifteen years of 
 
 age. About 1800, after liaviug 
 
 attended a country school during the winter months 
 and .acquired a scanty education, he became a print- 
 er's apprentice in Boston and served for six years. 
 During this period he contributed verses to various 
 periodicals. Leaving Boston to escape imprisonment 
 for debt he started on foot for New York, but finding 
 himself without money he stopped at New Haven. 
 There he remained nearly a year, wrote verses and 
 established a literary journal of his own, which failed. 
 He wandered off, another strolling Goldsmith, and 
 in 1808 found himself in Baltimore. In 1810 he was 
 married in New York. He there engaged in various 
 literary enterprises, united for a time the labors of 
 an author with those of a foreman of a composing- 
 room and a proofreader, and met with very moder- 
 ate success. He was brilliant and versatile, without 
 being precisely a genius; the light of his talent was 
 not a glaring flame, but a soft, steady radiance that 
 charmed from its lack of ambitious display. Sev- 
 eral editions of his poems were published. Such men 
 as Webster, Chauning, Irving, and Sir Walter Scott 
 spoke in his praise. He died in 1842. 
 
 A story, which for some years was generally re- 
 ceived as correct, was to the effect that Wood 
 worth's celebrated poem, " The Old Oaken Bucket," 
 had its origin in the author's love of liquor, and was 
 first suggested to him in a remorseful moment in 
 a Bowery tavern. The truth seems to be that 011 
 returning one sultry day to his home on Duaue 
 Street from his office in the region of lower Wall 
 Street he drank a glass of water from one of the 
 old-time pumps of the neighborhood, and remarked : 
 "That is very refreshing, but how much more re- 
 freshing would it be to take a good long draiight 
 from the old oaken bucket I left hanging in my 
 father's well at home." The poet's wife thereupon 
 remarked: "Why would n't that be a good sub- 
 ject for a poem." The poet, taking the hint, sat 
 down, and from the depths of his heart poured out 
 the lines which millions have since read with varied 
 emotions. Drunkards in rags, lost men of talent, 
 hopelessly enslaved by the love of drink, have re- 
 peated those lines in bar-rooms, and cried like chil- 
 dren at the thought of the orchard, the meadow, the 
 deep-tangled wildwood, and the moss-covered buck- 
 et dripping with coolness as it rose from the well 
 which their own infancy knew. 
 
 Little is known of this once noted printer by the 
 present generation. Traces of his life have almost 
 been obliterated, and of all his writings this famous 
 poem is his only memorial. 
 
 How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, 
 
 As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips ! 
 Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it, 
 
 Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips. 
 And now, far removed from the loved situation, 
 
 The tear of regret will intrusively swell, 
 As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, 
 
 And sighs for the bucket that hangs in the well ; 
 The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
 The moss-covered bucket which hangs in the well. 
 
 FAULTS in woodcuts annoying to printers : 
 
 Bad surfacing. A thick coat of flake white, or 
 a thin coat with gum and water, deceives the en- 
 graver as to the depth of the line he is cutting, 
 makes an insoluble compound with the ink used 
 in proving up, which can never be entirely re- 
 moved, which s wells up in little blotches and pre- 
 vents the electrotyper from getting a smooth sur- 
 face for a solid block. An over-surfaced block is 
 sure to cause grimy blocks and muddy tints. 
 
 Shallow cutting. Proper allowance should be 
 made for the facts that nearly all woodcuts are 
 printed from electrotype plates in very large 
 forms, on machine presses at high speed, with 
 cheaper ink, and on paper much inferior to that 
 used for the proof. A faint white line that scarce- 
 ly shows in the trial proof on the wood, will not 
 show at all in the electrotype. A dark gray tint 
 meeting with solid black which can hardly be 
 kept clean with hand-rolling, live-dollar ink, and 
 plate paper, will surely print muddily when done 
 on a machine with inferior materials. 
 
 Uneven cutting. If the counters of the white 
 lines in a smooth tint have been cut jagged, by 
 many uneven strokes of the tint tool, producing 
 an appearance in the counter like long saw-teeth, 
 and the tool has not been returned in the opposite 
 direction, the spurs made by these jags will pre- 
 vent the return of the molding-wax after mold- 
 ing. The wax broken off in the cut will necessa- 
 rily produce dirty little blotches in the tint which 
 are usually, but wrongfully, attributed to bad ink 
 and bad electrotyping. 
 
 Undercutting. The counter of a line should 
 never be perpendicular with, or undercut, the 
 face of the line. This fault is most noticeable in 
 the treatment of skies, when the fine lines of a 
 cloud are connected with the coarser wide lines 
 of the flat sky, and also in the curved lines used 
 for shading human limbs and faces. If the coun- 
 ter is undercut, the thin line of the face bends 
 under the pressure of the molding wax, and is 
 consequently molded partly on its side, producing 
 a thick and ragged line. Sometimes the wood 
 gaps, and sometimes it sinks, making the " rotten 
 sky" which is altogether too common in electro- 
 types. At this point it may be well to say that 
 the pressure required in molding two pages of 
 The Century is estimated by the electrotyper at 
 one thousand pounds for every square inch. It is 
 obvious that every line that is undercut must be 
 more or less distorted by the pressure. 
 
 Bad shouldering. The hair-line borders of wood- 
 cuts are generally cut without shoulders in 
 some instances almost perpendicular with the 
 face. It is almost impossible to mold these lines 
 without breaking the line with one or more gaps, 
 or without thickening or raggedness. The bor- 
 der line should always have a well-defined angling 
 shoulder A to insure its safety in molding. 
 
 Unfair proving. The right and indeed the duty 
 of an engraver to give a proof of his work in the 
 highest style in which it can be done by legitimate 
 printing.will not be questioned, but proofs as usu- 
 ally taken are really specimens not of fine print- 
 ing but of artful painting. The common practices 
 of washing out and wiping out skies and pale gray 
 tints, thereby changing a black into a gray ink, 
 and of concealing false cuts, and of reducing the 
 width of white lines by overloading the solids 
 with black ink, may be justly objected to as gross- 
 ly unfair. 
 
101 
 
 PEARL No. 20. TEN-TO-PICA LEADS. 160 LINES, 1578 WORDS. 
 
 ETRARCH said of his books, con- 
 sidered as his friends : " I have 
 friends whose society is extremely 
 agreeable to me ; they are of all 
 ages, and of every country. They 
 have distinguished themselves 
 both in the cabinet and in the 
 field, and obtained high honors for 
 their knowledge of the sciences. 
 It is easy to gain access to them, 
 my service, and I admit them to 
 hem from it, whenever I please. 
 
 for they are always at m 
 my company, and dismiss 
 They are never troublesome, but immediately answer every 
 question I ask them. Some relate to me the events of the 
 past ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of nature. 
 Some teach me how to live, and others how to die. Some, 
 by their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my 
 spirits, while others give fortitude to my mind, and teach 
 me the important lesson how to restrain my desires and to 
 depend wholly on myself. They open to me, in short, the 
 various avenues of all the arts and sciences, and upon their 
 information I safely rely in all emergencies." 
 
 Reading is the fuel of the mind ; and, the mind once on 
 fire, any and all material will feed the flame, provided only 
 it have any combustible matter in it. And we cannot tell 
 from what quarter the next material will come. The 
 thought we need, the facts we are in search of, may make 
 their appearance in the corner of a newspaper, or in some 
 forgotten volume long ago consigned to dust and oblivion. 
 Hawthorne, in the parlor of a country inn, on a rainy day, 
 could find mental nutriment in an old directory. That 
 accomplished philologist, the late Lord Strangford, could 
 find ample amusement for an hour's delay at a railway 
 station in tracing out the etymology of the names in Brad- 
 shaw. The mind that is not awake and alive will find a 
 library a barren wilderness. 
 
 A book that is worth reading all through is pretty sure to 
 make its worth known. There is something in the literary 
 conscience which tells a reader whether he is wasting his 
 time or not. An hour or a minute may be sufficient oppor- 
 tunity for forming a decision concerning the worth or 
 worthlessness of the book. If it is utterly bad and valueless, 
 then skip the whole of it, as soon as you have made the dis- 
 covery. If a part is good and a part bad, accept the one 
 and reject the other. If you are in doubt, take warning at 
 the first intimation that you are misspending your opportu- 
 nity and frittering away your time over an unprofitable 
 book. Reading that is of questionable value is not hard to 
 find out ; it bears its notes and marks in unmistakable 
 plainness, and it puts forth, all unwittingly, danger signals 
 which the reader should heed. 
 
 The art of skipping is, in a word, the art of noting and 
 shunning that which is bad, or frivolous, or misleading, or 
 unsuitable for one's individual needs. If you are con- 
 vinced that the book or the chapter is bad, you cannot 
 drop it too quickly. If it is simply idle and foolish, put it 
 away on that account. If it is deceitful and disingenuous, 
 your task is not so easy, but your conscience will give you 
 warning, and the sharp examination which should follow 
 will tell you that you are in poor literary company. 
 
 Admitting the utility of the reading of periodicals, and 
 even insisting upon the necessity and duty of reading 
 them, it must nevertheless be said in the plainest manner 
 that an alarming amount of time is wasted over them, or 
 worse than wasted. When we have determined that news- 
 papers and magazines ought to be read, let us by no means 
 flatter ourselves that all our reading of them is commend- 
 able or justifiable. 1 am quite safe in saying that the indi- 
 vidual who is reading these lines wastes more than half the 
 time that he devotes to periodicals. " To learn to choose 
 what is valuable and skip the rest," is a good rule for 
 reading periodicals ; and it is a rule whose observance will 
 prevent the reader from falling into that demoralizing and 
 altogether disgraceful inability to hold the mind upon any 
 continuous subject of thought or study, which is sure to 
 follow in the train of thoughtless reading of periodicals. 
 And when, as too often happens, a man comes to read noth- 
 ing save his morning paper at breakfast or on the train, 
 and his evening paper after his work is over, that man's 
 brain, so far as reading is concerned, is only half alive. 
 
 CONSIDER what you have in the smallest chosen library. 
 A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be 
 picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have 
 set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. 
 The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, 
 impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette ; but the 
 thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend 
 is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers 
 of another age. We owe to books those general benefits 
 which come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, 
 we often owe to them the perception of immortality. 
 They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power. 
 Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then 
 read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled 
 with men of a positive quality, with heroes and demigods 
 standing around us, who will not let us sleep. 
 
 Colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no 
 professor of books ; and, I think, there is no chair so much 
 wanted. In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds 
 of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter 
 in these paper and leather boxes; and though they know 
 us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries 
 for us some of them and are eager to give us a sign, 
 and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that 
 they must not speak until spoken to ; and as the enchanter 
 has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and 
 jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your 
 chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by 
 the arithmetical rule of permutation and combination 
 not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million 
 caskets all alike. But it happens, in our experience, that 
 in this lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks 
 to a prize. It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, after 
 losing a great deal of time among the false books, and 
 alighting upon a few true ones which made him happy 
 and wise, would do a right act in naming those which 
 have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark 
 morasses and barren oceans into the heart of sacred cities, 
 into palaces and temples. This would be best done by 
 those great masters of books who from time to time ap- 
 pearthe Fabricii, the Seldens, Magliabecchis, Scaligers, 
 Mirandolas, Bayles, Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole 
 horizon of learning. 
 
 Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first 
 quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of 
 quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line 
 will be quoted east and west. Then there are great ways of 
 borrowing. Genius borrows nobly. When Shakspere is 
 charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet 
 he was more original than his originals. He breathed 
 upon dead bodies and brought them into life." And we 
 must thank Karl Ottfried Muller for the just remark, 
 " Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and 
 inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its 
 flowers originally grew." So Voltaire usually imitated, 
 but with such superiority that Dubuc said : " He is like 
 the false Amphitryon ; although the stranger, it is always 
 he who has the air of being master of the house." Words- 
 worth, as soon as he heard a good thing, caught it up, 
 meditated upon it, and very soon reproduced it in his con- 
 versation and writing. If De Quincey said, " That is what 
 I told you," he replied, "No; that is mine mine, and 
 not yours." On the whole, we like the valor of it. 'T is 
 on Marmontel's principle, " I pounce on what is mine, 
 wherever I find it," and on Bacon's broader rule, " I take 
 all knowledge to be my province." It betrays the con- 
 sciousness that truth is the property of no individual, but 
 is the treasure of all men. And in so far as any writer has 
 ascended to a just view of man's condition, he has adopted 
 this tone. In so far as the receiver's aim is on life, and not 
 on literature, will be his indifference to the source. The 
 nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question 
 of authorship. It never troubles the simple seeker from 
 whom he derived such or such a sentiment. Whoever 
 expresses to us a just thought makes ridiculous the pains 
 of the critic who should tell him where such a word had 
 been said before. But it is as difficult to appropriate the 
 thoughts of others, as it is to invent. Some steep transi- 
 tion, some sudden alteration of temperature, or point of 
 view, betrays the foreign interpolation. 
 
 CHAS. F. RICHARDSON. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
102 
 
 BRILLIANT, ROMAN AND ITALIC. 
 
 BRILLIANT. SOLID. 
 
 E are as much informed of > writer 1 ! geniu. by what 
 he .elect, a, by what he originate.. We read the 
 quotation with hi. eye* and find a n.w and fervent .entt ; 
 
 W 
 
 e poeta, well recited, borrows 
 ering. A. the journal, say, 
 e profit of book. i. according to 
 
 The italic. areur.." The profit of book, is according to 
 the .ensibility of the reader. The profounde.t thought or 
 passion deeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart 
 finds and publishes it. ... 
 
 In hours of high mental activity we K>metime do the 
 book too much honor, reading out of it better things than 
 the author wrote reading, as we say, between the line.. 
 You have had the like experience in conversation : the 
 wit was in what you heard, not in what the speakers said. 
 Our be.t thought came from others. We heard in their 
 words a deeper sense than the speakers put into them, and 
 could express ourselves in other people's phrases to finer 
 purpose than they knew. . . . 
 
 We cannot overstate our debt to the Fast, but the mo- 
 ment ha. the .upreme claim. The Past i. for us ; but the 
 sole terms on which it can become our. are its subordi- 
 nation to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to 
 borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We 
 must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul. 
 
 th^hfnt.'whieh nlslTfrom if, 'th"w"rdsovjrheard at un- 
 awares by the free mind, are trustworthy and fertile, when 
 obeyed, and not perverted to low and selfish account. This 
 vast memory is only raw material. The divine gift ift ever 
 the instant life, which receive. au.l uses and creates, and 
 can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Na- 
 
 f decomposes all her harvest for ren 
 
 , is a tie betwei 
 
 BRILLIANT ITALIC. SOLID. 
 
 BRILLIANT ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 JTHISK we should all of u, be grateful for boot, .- they are 
 our bea friend, and most faithful companion,. They in- 
 struct, cheer, elevate, and ennoble u, : and in whatever mood 
 w yo to them, they never frown upon us, but receive u, with 
 cordial and lovimi ..,,o-,-ir,. Xritber .( tli'ii blab, or tell tale, 
 of u, when we are gone to the next comer : but honestly, and 
 with manly /rani,,,.., tl ,,nl- ( , hf.irts in admonition or 
 encouragement. 1 do not know how it is with other men. but 
 lhavesomuch revrrracr i'nr these nilfnt and beautiful friend, 
 that I feel in them to have an immortal possession, which i, 
 more valuable to me than many estates and kingdoms. 
 
 The choice of books is not the least part of the duty of a 
 Kholar. If he would become a man, and worthy to deal 
 with manlitt thing* he must read only the bravest and no- 
 blest book, : boots forned at the heart 'and fashioned by the 
 intellect of a godlike man. A clever, interesting writer it a 
 clever, intereUing fool, and i, no master for the scholar I 
 peak of. Our literature abound, with such person,, and will 
 abound with them so long as the public mind remains diseased 
 with this morbid love of light reading." We have exchanged 
 rthe commonwealth's men for the nim- 
 
 ble foot of t 
 
 ! fain cult, 
 
 idloveoflig 
 amp of the Co 
 , lamplighter : 
 
 tendencies of I 
 
 id the thief- 
 *and"afm{ r We l hn'v', J ' e h 1 ad n en 
 
 fat.,. 
 
 world in thei, ,t*d, / I, 
 all study i, action, and 1 
 ba-lams in favor of the Kholar. Bui a c 
 slon i, neciuary for culture in the first , 
 
 a higher , 
 . exclusion 
 
 greilive development, t 
 mind will not be play. 
 
 "or the laws of the intellect, 
 : as stern and binding a, 
 cannot neglect or violate them wi 
 te book, should be our constant coj 
 t thought, and hold a man to his t 
 
 lot culture afterward,. The human 
 nth, or the planer will find it out to 
 
 .-!..- 
 
 piritvnl 
 tier, and 
 
 i los, or nfering. 
 
 . S. PHILLIPS. 
 
 oo. 
 
 0.0, 
 
 torrowt, shortcoming,, miterie,, and misadventure,, that 
 a chapter of aid or consolation never come, ami,,, 1 think. 
 There i, a pitiless, pelting rain this morning : heavily againtt 
 my study window, drive, the northwestern gate : and altogether 
 it i, a very fit day for working at such a chapter. The indoor 
 comfort, which enable one to resent with composure nay, 
 even to welcome - this outward conflict and hubbub are like 
 the plan, and resource, provided by philosophy and religion 
 to meet the various calamities driven against the soul in it, 
 pauage through thi: Oormy world. The boot, which reward 
 me have been found an equal retource in both reqiecU. both 
 again,! the weather from without and from within against 
 phyrical and mental storm, ; and, if it might be K, I would 
 pom on to other, the comfort which a stasonalle word hat 
 often brought to me. If I were to loot round thete ihelve,, 
 what a hott of well-loved name, would rite up in those who 
 have laid brave or wise wordi to comfort and aid their breth- 
 ren in adversity. And boot, are yet to be written, and strong 
 men are yet to come, to alleviate afresh the sadness of life. A'o 
 word, lent out with thi, intention shall fail to fnd a lodg- 
 
 It seems as if little remained to be laid : but in truth there i, 
 t land in the human heart to be tilled. 
 
 Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 
103 
 FOUR- LINE PICA No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED.* 
 
 B 
 
 VER Y Li- 
 brary, says 
 The Poet at the 
 Breakfast Table 
 (Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes), should 
 try to be complete 
 
 on something, if 
 
 .<-* *' 
 
 only the history 
 of pin-heads. 
 
IO4 
 DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 A VER Y learned 
 ^~L man was IVilliam 
 Budceus. He took little 
 interest in business, but 
 'was noted for his intense 
 application to his books. 
 One day while absorbed 
 in study he was informed 
 that his house was on fire. 
 To this announcement he 
 gave his usual response : 
 (( Tell my wife of it, for 
 I never meddle with do- 
 mestic affairs'.' 
 
IDS 
 
 DOUBLE GREAT PRIMER No. 13 ITALIC. DOUBLE LEADED.* 
 
 rHE pride of 
 man is not easy 
 to put down. If you 
 stop it up at the hole 
 A 9 it will peep out at 
 hole ~B. Close that 
 up, and quicker than 
 thought it will stand 
 at the hole C. Pride 
 snares the unwary, 
 and proves a draw- 
 back to the unregen- 
 erate. 
 
io6 
 DOUBLE ENGLISH No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 ATOTHING deltghts 
 _/ V a true blockhead so 
 much as to prove a negative 
 to show that everybody 
 has been wrong in what 
 they believed true. Fancy 
 the delicious sensation to 
 an empty-headed creature 
 of realising for a moment 
 that he has emptied every- 
 body's else head as well as 
 his own ! nay, that for 
 once his own hollow bottle 
 of a head has had the best 
 of other bottles and has been 
 the first empty, the first to 
 know nothing. 
 
 RUSKIN. 
 
LOUIS QUATORZE SCRIPT, BODY 32. LEADED. 
 
 C^ y'jfienevet Q) have to do 
 V V wtt/i iiounq men anu 
 
 cJ cJ 
 
 women, ne daw, Q) always wuk 
 to know wkat t/ieti 000116 cute. 
 G) wtdli to aejenu tkem jwm 
 DCLO ; Q) WiArt to mtwauce tkem 
 to good; Q) wtd/i to Apeak of tke 
 immense benefit wktck a qoou 
 mtnu aeuved fwm leading, Q) 
 trunk, tf a uoiinq man of aoiittij 
 Afioiiw awe yon kid konedt ex- 
 perience, you. wouiu fine tkat 
 ne oweo more tmpuUe to oookd 
 tkan to Living mindd, 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
io8 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 rHERE are hundreds of 
 thousands of books in the 
 Paris Library so scarce that even 
 the persistent searchers of the 
 British Museum have been un- 
 able to duplicate them. A fitting 
 rejoinder to Solomons remark, 
 "Of making many books there 
 is no end" would be that there 
 does nt seem to be any end either 
 to destroying about seven-eighths 
 of the many books that are made. 
 MS hy should not every printer keep, 
 in some way, a sort of systematic 
 catalogue of all the publications 
 sent out from his establishment, 
 with the author s name and a brief 
 synopsis of the contents ? That 
 would save so much to posterity, 
 though the entire edition should 
 have been lost. 
 
109 
 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA No. 13 ITALIC. DOCBLK LKAUI.I;.' 
 
 O W calculate or just think 
 enough to feel the impos- 
 sibility of calculating the num- 
 ber of wood-cuts used daily for 
 our popular prints, and how 
 many men are night and day 
 cutting 1050 square holes to the 
 square inch as the occupation of 
 their daily life. And yet Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe and the North 
 Americans fancy they have abol- 
 ished slavery ! The truth is, that 
 time and place, complexion and 
 condition, have little to do with 
 the question of slavery. It is the 
 occupation, and the necessity of 
 continuing in it, that robs the 
 man of his independence and 
 makes him a slave. 
 
110 
 
 DOUBLE SMALL PICA LITHOGRAPHIC ITALIC. TRIPLE LEADED.' 
 
 G-oldsmith, 
 Bunyan, and Crusoe 
 when I was a ~boy, morn- 
 ing, noon, and night. I took 
 to these as I took to milk, 
 and, without the least idea 
 what I was doing, got the 
 taste for simple words into 
 the very fiber of my nature. 
 That vast hanger to read 
 never left me. If there was 
 no candle, I poked my head 
 dow7^ to the fire; read while 
 I was eating, blowing the 
 ~bellows, or walking from 
 one place to another. I could 
 read and walk four miles 
 an hour. My world cen- 
 tered 
 
 ROBEKT 
 
1 1 1 
 
 GREAT PRIMER LITHOGRAPHIC ITALIC. DOUBLE LEADED.* 
 
 A 
 
 JST affecting instance of 
 the tenderness and the 
 compensations of teaming is 
 furnished ns ~by the old age 
 of Usher, when no spectacles 
 coixld help his fatting sight, 
 and a t>oo~k, v^as dark except 
 t)eneath the strongest light of 
 the -vrindovr. Sopefixl and -re- 
 signed he continaed his tasT^, 
 follovring the sixn from -room 
 to -room throixgh the hoixse he 
 lived in, nntil the shadovrs 
 of the trees disappeared f~rom 
 the g~rass, and the day vras 
 done. Ho^v^ delightful nuast 
 have ~been his feelings, v^hen 
 the sunbeam fell brilliantly 
 upon some half-rerrLerribered 
 passage, and thoixght after 
 thonght shone out from the 
 misty ^words, like thefeatares 
 of a familiar landscape in a 
 clearing fog. REV . R O B ERT A . W ILLM O TT . 
 
112 
 
 GREAT PRIMER No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 ^ I ^HE "Book Buyer" prints an amusing 
 1 letter from Mr. T. B. Aldrick to Prof. 
 E. S. Morse, ex-president of the American 
 Academy for the Advancement of Science. 
 Professor Morse, it should be stated, has a 
 handwriting quite indescribable. "My dear 
 Morse: It was very .pleasant for me to get 
 a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I 
 should have found it pleasanter if I had 
 been able to decipher it. I dont think I 
 mastered anything beyond the date (which 
 I knew) and the signature (which I guessed 
 at). There 's a singular and perpetual 
 charm in a letter of yours ; it never grows 
 old, it never loses its novelty. One can say 
 to ones self every morning : 'There 's that 
 letter of Morse s ; I have nt read it yet. I 
 think I '// take another shy at it to-day, and 
 maybe I shall be able in the course of a few 
 years to make out what he means by those 
 fs that look like w's and those i's that 
 have nt any eyebrows'. Other letters are 
 read and thrown away and forgotten, but 
 yours are kept forever unread. One of 
 them will last a reasonable man a lifetime. 
 Admiringly yours, T. B. Aldrich" 
 
H3 
 
 GREAT PRIMER No. 13 ITALIC. LEADED.* 
 
 JN the office of a Wisconsin journal 
 there is a compositor who sets type so 
 rapidly that the friction of his movements 
 melts the lead in his stick, making of the 
 type solid stereotype plates. To prevent 
 this his case is submerged in water, yet the 
 rapidity of his motions keeps the water boil- 
 ing and bubbling, so that eggs have been 
 frequently boiled in the space-box. Pipes 
 lead from the bottom of his case to a boiler 
 in the press-room, and the steam generated 
 by the compositor's rapid movements runs 
 the power press. In one day he set so 
 much that it took all hands, from editor 
 to devil, two weeks to read the proof, and 
 it was not his good day for setting type, 
 either. In three years he earned enough 
 to buy a town house, a hillside farm, and 
 the controlling interest in a bank. The 
 only thing that prevented his purchasing 
 the newspaper itself was the lack of some 
 one to take his place in the composing room. 
 He is forty-two years old, and has been a 
 phenomenal type-setter all his life, but was 
 never appreciated until he went to Wis- 
 consin. 
 
114 
 
 ENGLISH No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 ^i^HE description of letter in which this page is 
 * composed was designed by Aldus Manutius, a 
 Roman, who married the daughter of Andrew Tor- 
 resani, manager of the printing office in Venice which 
 had formerly belonged to Nicholas Jenson. Aboiit 
 the year 1490 Aldus obtained control of the establish- 
 ment, the reputation of which he greatly increased by 
 his scholarship and by his numerous editions of the 
 classics. He possessed no superior skill as a typog- 
 rapher, but he introduced Roman types of a very neat 
 cut, and invented the letter which we call Italic. It 
 was originally designed to distinguish such parts of 
 a book as might be said not strictly to belong to the 
 body of the work, as prefaces, introductions, annota- 
 tions, etc., all of which it was the custom formerly to 
 print in Italics. In the present age it is used more 
 sparingly, the necessity being supplied by the more 
 elegant mode of inclosing extracts within quotation 
 marks, and poetry and annotations in a smaller 
 sized type. The too frequent use of Italic is useless 
 and absurd. It is too often made use of to mark 
 emphatic sentences or words, but without any rule 
 or system, and so destroys, in a great measure, the 
 beauty of pointing, and often confuses the reader 
 where it is improperly applied, who, pausing to con- 
 sider why such words are more strongly noted, loses 
 the context of the sentence and has to revert back to 
 regain the sense of the subject. Not only does Italic 
 so confuse the reader, but the boldface of the Roman 
 suffers by being contrasted with the fine strokes of the 
 Italic, and that symmetry and proportion is destroyed 
 which it is so necessary and desirable to preserve. 
 
COLUMBIAN No. 13 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 W N England the general reader borrows Ms 
 1 books from a circulating library, wliile in 
 America lie oivns them. An eminent English 
 mathematician once said that the thing wliicli 
 most surprised him ivhen he first arrived in this 
 country was to hear two young ladies say they 
 had been into town to buy some boohs. " To 
 buy some boohs!" he repeated, in astonishment; 
 "In England nobody buys a booh" This asser- 
 tion ivas, perhaps, not mathematically exact, but 
 it may serve to mark the difference between the 
 two sets of readers of the one language. Mr. 
 Lang, in his delightful booh on "The Library" 
 reveals his English limitations at once when he 
 speaks of boohs being "the rarest of possessions 
 in many houses. There are relics of the age 
 before circulating libraries; there are fragments 
 of the lettered store of some scholarly great- 
 grandfather ; and these, witli a few odd num- 
 bers of magazines, a few primers and manuals, 
 some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary 
 library of a British household." There is some- 
 thing to be said in favor of the English system 
 of borroiving books but not much. A booh 
 that is really wortli reading is wortli owning. 
 A booh that has benefited you wliile reading 
 ought to be within reach immediately whenever 
 you want to refer to it again. It is best to 
 own all really good boohs. i**.i 
 
n6 
 ELZEVIR ITALIC BODY 14. LEADED. 
 
 /T was exceedingly clever, what may, perhaps, be 
 catted smart, just at a moment when English 
 authors were placed by a new efflorescence of piracy 
 in a worse position than ever on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, that the American periodical should have 
 invaded our shores. But so it was. It has made, we 
 believe, a most successful invasion, and not without 
 deserving its success. For the American magazines 
 which England bos accepted with cordiality are excel- 
 lent in ittustration; and if their literary qualities are 
 not the highest they have at least a certain novelty and 
 freshness of flavor. 
 
 There are, however, certain results of their intro- 
 duction to this country which are more important than 
 the possibly ephemeral success which a public, more 
 free from prejudices in favor of its own than ever pub- 
 lic was before, has awarded to them; and these are, 
 first, the revelation of some American authors little or 
 not at att known in England, and second, a full per- 
 ception, hitherto possible only to a few, of the claims of 
 America in literature. These claims we have hitherto 
 been very charitable to, as the early clutches of a great 
 literature about to come into being, though as yet some- 
 what stunted and not of lavish growth, at the laurels 
 of fame . But few, perhaps, were aware how little con- 
 sideration was thought to be necessary, or how entirely 
 sure our transatlantic relations were of having attained 
 a standing-ground of certainty much above that vague 
 platform of hope. The American magazine has re- 
 vealed this with effect. 
 
 BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. 
 
PICA LITHOGRAPHIC ITALIC. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 AFIHSTE book noTV means putting CL 
 splash of small, ignoble type, in the 
 middle of CL staring expanse of discol- 
 ored paper paper, as a rule, dignified 
 -with, the title of " hand-made," on the 
 strength of its being too thick and stiff 
 . to turn over properly or lie flat, as it 
 should. We heap these buckram, pages 
 together till they matte a clumsy volume, 
 which Tve put into a -white vellum or 
 parchment or calico binding that soils 
 Tvith the slightest touch ; ive scrawl 
 some glaring inscription over the sides, 
 and call the result an edition de luxe! 
 Artistically, the thing is a mistake. 
 The letterpress should fit the page, in 
 spite of all we have heard of the (f neat 
 rivulet of text meandering through a 
 meadow of margin " ; and there can ~be 
 no doubt that though margins there 
 mu,st ~be and good margins, too they 
 mast be in strict proportion, to the size 
 of the page. Too mach margin, though 
 better than too little, is still a fault, and 
 vrith this, as with everything else, there 
 is virtue in moderation. A. grave error 
 is the modern custom of putting small 
 type in big pages, and trusting to the 
 Tvide margins to make amends. The 
 type must ~be proportioned to the page, 
 and, biff books ought to be in big type. 
 
 PAPER AND PRINT. 
 
PICA No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 / 7* VER Y now and then it becomes an editor s duty to say 
 il* a few words to contributors, either privately or in his 
 editorial columns, in regard to their methods of preparing 
 manuscript. It is, fortunately, no longer necessary to say, 
 " Write only on one side of the paper," or " Don t fold each 
 sheet separately" ; for no one to-day commits these capital 
 offenses. Untidy manuscripts, however, are still common, 
 and when combined with peculiar or affected chirography, 
 are wearisome things to deal with. To a reader of refine- 
 ment, wretchedly prepared manuscript is as repugnant as a 
 slouchy person. It at least indicates careless habits, and 
 leads up to the inference that what is not worth preparing 
 well in manuscript is not worth perpetuating in print. A 
 private letter, bearing on this point, was written by one 
 of our editors last week, which ran somewhat as follows : 
 
 "As I have written to you once or twice in a way not usual 
 with an editor, I am tempted to go farther and give you a 
 little advice about the appearance of your manuscripts. If 
 you will excuse my saying it, they are very untidy. It is 
 greatly to your disadvantage that they come into the editor s 
 hands in such condition ; he is always prejudiced at the start 
 against a manuscript that is rolled or folded so as to neces- 
 sitate a constant effort to keep the pages open sufficiently to 
 be read, and made up of different kinds and sizes of paper, 
 or blotted and interlined to the extent of being rendered in 
 the least illegible, or that is in any other way untidy. It is 
 said of one well-known editor that he refitses to read any 
 manuscripts that are untidy or hard to hold. The manu- 
 script should be so prepared that the editor can put his 
 whole thought upon its subject-matter. That manuscript 
 is the most welcome, perhaps, that is prepared from a pad 
 of note-paper size, and is sent in an envelope large enough so 
 that the paper need not be folded. Then the editor will at 
 least not be prejudiced against an article before he begins to 
 read it" 
 
 INDEPENDENT. 
 
IIQ 
 
 PICA No. ii ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 /USED to believe a great deal more in opportunities 
 and less in application than I do now. Time and 
 health are needed, but with these there are always opportu- 
 nities. Rich people have a fancy for spending money very 
 uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more valu- 
 able when it has been costly ; but the truth is that by the 
 blessing of good and cheap literature intellectual light has. 
 become almost as accessible as daylight. I have a rich 
 friend who travels more and buys more costly things than 
 I do ; but he does not really learn more or advance farther 
 in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully occupied, what has 
 he to set against them f Only other well-occupied days, no 
 more. If he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg, he is miss- 
 ing the benefit I am getting round my house and in it. 
 The sum of the year's benefit seems to be surprisingly alike 
 in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of thoroughly 
 good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well 
 occupied as you are he is certainly not better occupied. 
 When I open a noble volume, I say to myself, "Now 
 the only Crwsus that I envy is the man who is reading a 
 better book than this." . . . 
 
 I willingly concede all that you say against fashionable 
 society as a whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on 
 amusement, incapable of attention sufficiently prolonged to 
 grasp any serious subject, and liable both to confusion and 
 inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily forms or easily 
 receives. You do right, assuredly, not to let it waste your 
 most valuable hours, but I believe also that you do wrong 
 in keeping out of it altogether. The society ivhich seems so 
 frivolous in masses contains individual members who, if 
 you knew them better, would be able and willing to render 
 you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this 
 help by restricting yourself exclusively to books. Nothing 
 can replace the conversation of living men and women ; 
 not even the richest literature can replace it. 
 
 PHILIP G. HAMERTON. 
 
120 
 ELZEVIR ITALIC BODY 12. LEADED. 
 
 anxious inquirer having written to the Chicago 
 Tribune to know what be should do to become a first- 
 class proof-reader, received the following reply: 
 
 " To become a first-class proof-reader is a very easy task 
 so easy that the wonder is that more young people don't 
 take it up instead of clerking or copying. The first step is 
 to serve an apprenticeship at printing, which will enable the 
 student to discern typographical irregularities. A general 
 acquaintance with history, biography, poetry, fiction, music, 
 geography, the drama, etc., is important. Politics should 
 have attention, for you must be able to identify every man who 
 has followed the business from Cain down to the present day. 
 No matter whether be is the Premier of England, or the Caliph 
 of Bagdad, or a Bridgeport 'terrier' you should have a 
 minute knowledge of bis public and private life and be able 
 to seleft the proper Spelling from the balf-do^en ways which 
 the author is sure to employ. Read, ponder, and assim- 
 ilate Webster, the Bible, SbakSpere, ' Anthon's Classical 
 Dictionary,' 'Roget's Thesaurus,' ' Lippincott s Gazetteer,' 
 'Hoyden's Dictionary of Dates,' the cyclopaedias of Appleton, 
 ZeU, Johnson, and others, ( Bremiscb-Neidersachsisches Wor- 
 terbucb,' ' Brandtkes Slownik dokladny Je^yka Polskiego 
 Neimieckigo,' and any other works of a solid nature that 
 happen to be at hand. During the long Winter evenings 
 you might scoop in a few languages say Greek, Latin, 
 French, Hebrew, Russian, German, Chinese, Bohemian, and 
 Choftaw. The business is learned in a short time by any 
 young man with a little perseverance, and affords constant 
 employment (twelve hours seven days a week) at a liberal 
 compensation ($20), with frequent honorable mention . When 
 vou have picked up the rudiments mentioned, if you don't 
 conclude to become a college professor at $5000 a year, call 
 at the Tribune office, and we will give you a desk. Our 
 present proof-readers are hardly up to the standard." 
 
121 
 ELZEVIR ITALIC BODY 10. LEADED. 
 
 years ago /was one evening sitting in my study when a 
 lad entered my presence and asked if I would be willing to lend 
 him something to read. I replied in the affirmative, and inquired what 
 kind of reading matter he desired. He expressed a wish for something 
 that was exciting, and I requested him to be a little more definite. Then 
 he gave me a vivid summary of a work which he had recently read to his 
 great enjoyment; evidently one of those trashy romances of which so 
 many are published in <fC Boys' Libraries," whose perusal can in no wise 
 be beneficial. 
 
 I went to my bookcase and took from it one of Abbot's histories for 
 young people, " The History of Darius the Great." Opening it I read ( 
 the paragraph in which is given an account of the shooting by Cambyses 
 of his friend's son through the heart with an arrow before the father's 
 eyes. Then I asked if he thought the book would suit him, and he an- 
 swered, " Yes, sir." 
 
 He carried the book away with him and two evenings later returned 
 with it, inquiring if I would lend him another similar to it. I did so, 
 and let him have other volumes in succession, until within three months 
 after receiving the first he had read the thirty and odd volumes forming 
 the series read them under standingly, I learned by questioning him 
 and acquired a taste for substantial literary food. 
 
 This summer he will graduate with the highest honors from one of the 
 foremost colleges in the country, having defrayed the expenses of the 
 preparatory school and the college by his earnings when his mates were 
 many of them resting. He intends eventually to praclice at the bar, 
 where one of his disposition is likely to become a shining light, if neither 
 a Webster nor a Choate. 
 
 He is pleased to attribute his desire for an education to my encourage- 
 ment years since, but I can conscientiously credit myself only with having 
 brought to his consideration the books to which I have refenred. 
 
 Young friends, read these same books, or books of a similar character, 
 instead of the printed stuff which greets your vision on every side. You 
 will find the story of real flesh and blood heroes and heroines as exciting 
 as is that of fictitious personages, and reading of them will be stimulated 
 to emulate their noblest, to abhor their worst, traits. Best of all, such 
 books will incite you to acquire additional information relative to those 
 concerning whom you have been reading, and eventually to secure an 
 education that will fit you to make your way through the world suc- 
 cessfully. 
 
 FREDERICK F. FOSTER, in "Harper's Young People." 
 
122 
 
 SMALL PICA No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 ^ j ^ HE ancient printers, or, at least, those of the fifteenth century, 
 J had only very small presses, and two folio pages, little larger 
 than two pages of foolscap, was the largest surface they could print. 
 It is probable also that the system of laying down pages, or "imposing" 
 them, that we now have, was not then known. Their mode of pro- 
 cedure was as follows : They took a certain number of sheets of paper, 
 three, four, five, or more, and folded them in the middle, the quantity 
 forming a section. Three sheets thus folded or " quired " is called a 
 ternion ; four sheets a quaternion, and so on. Hence, the first sheet 
 would contain the first two pages of the ternion and the last two pages ; 
 a that is, pages one and tvvo, and eleven and twelve. The second sheet 
 lying inside the first, would contain pages three and four and nine 
 and ten ; the third sheet having pages five and six and seven and 
 eight. If the reader will take three slips of paper and fold them in 
 the same manner, marking the numbers of the pages, the process will 
 be easily understood. 
 
 It is obvious that when a system of this kind was adopted, there was 
 a danger lest the loose sheets should become disarranged, and not 
 follow in their proper order. To obviate such an accident, there was 
 written at the bottom of the first page of each leaf, a Roman numeral, 
 as j, ij, iij ( i, 2, 3), and so on. This plan was originally adopted 
 by the scribes, and the printers merely imitated it. When the num- 
 bers followed in due order, it was evident that the sheets were prop- 
 erly quired together. 
 
 But a book being made up of a number of quires, there was a dan- 
 ger lest the quires themselves should become disarranged. To prevent 
 this, there was written at the foot of each page a letter of the alphabet. 
 The first sheet would bear the letter a ; the second b, and so on. 
 When these two indications were present, the binder could never be 
 in doubt as td the order of the different sheets. The first page of the 
 book was marked a j ; the third page, a ij ; the fifth page, a iij, and 
 so forth. The m xt quire presented the letters b j, b ij, b iij, and so on. 
 
 These indications at the foot of the pages are knoivn as signatures. 
 When a page bears one of them it is said to be " signed," and where 
 there is no mark of the kind it is said to be "unsigned." In the 
 earliest books, the signatures were written with a pen, and the fact 
 that many copies that have been preserved do not now bear signatures, 
 is owing to the fact that they were written so close to the margin that 
 they have been cut off since. 
 
123 
 SMALL PICA No. 11 ITALIC. LEADED, 
 
 HAT one should possess no books beyond his power of peril- 
 sal that lie should buy no faster than he can read straight 
 through ivhat he has already bought is a supposition alike pre- 
 posterous and unreasonable. " Surely you have far more books 
 than you can read" is sometimes the inane remark of the bar- 
 barian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circu- 
 lating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one 
 after the other, with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure 
 that he has got the value of his money. 
 
 It is true that there are some books, as Homer, Virgil, Horace, 
 Milton, Shakspere, and Scott, which every man should read ivho 
 has the opportunity should read, mark, learn, and inwardly 
 digest. To neglect the opportunity of becoming familiar ivith 
 them is deliberately to sacrifice the position in the social scale 
 which an ordinary education enables its possessor to reach. But 
 is one next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes of the 
 " Bollandist Lives of the Saints," and the new edition of the By- 
 zantine historians, and the State Trials, and the Encyclopcedia 
 Britannica, and Moreri, and the Statutes at Large, and the Gen- 
 tleman's Magazine, from the beginning, each separately and in 
 succession f Such a course of reading would do a good deal to- 
 wards weakening the mind, if it did not create absolute insanity. 
 
 But in all these just named, even in the Statutes at Large, and 
 in thousands upon thousands of other books, there is precious 
 honey to be gathered by the literary busy bee, who passes on from 
 flower to flower. In fact, " a course of reading," as it is some- 
 times called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing the mind, like 
 the drugs which dog-breeders give to King Charles spaniels to 
 keep them small. Within the span of life allotted to man there 
 is but a certain number of books that it is practicable to read 
 through, and it is not possible to make a selection that will not, 
 in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over the re- 
 public of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect 
 in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental 
 slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibboris " Decline and 
 Fall,", luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is and rapid 
 and brilliant the narrative, tvill become deleterious mental food 
 if consumed straight through without variety. It will be well to 
 relieve it occasionally with a little lighter reading. 
 
I2 4 
 LONG PRIMER No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 "" / "HE activity of the early printers was remarkable. The task of pre- 
 J serving the literature of the world was fairly done at a very early date. 
 There were not many books that promised to be salable and profitable, and 
 some of them were scarce, and copies were obtained with difficulty ; but nearly 
 every -valuable book was found and printed. Naude, the librarian of Cardinal 
 Mazarin, said that before the year 1474 all the good books, however bulky, had 
 been printed two or three limes, to say nothing of many worthless works which 
 should have been burned. The same work was often printed in the same year 
 by four or five rival printers in as many different cities. The catalogue of 
 Hain very minutely describes 16,290 editions, which, at the low estimate of 
 joo copies for each edition, represents a total production of 4,887,000 books. 
 
 The failure of many early printers to make their business profitable was 
 largely 'caused by their injudicious selection for publication of bulky theological 
 writings which cost a great deal of money to print and were salable only to a 
 small class. It was umvisely supposed that printing would receive its great 
 support from the ecclesiastics. With this object in view, the first printers 
 printed almost exclusively in Latin, and generally in the expensive shape of 
 folio the books which could be read only by the learned, and bought only by 
 the wealthy. The printers' 1 hopes of profit were rarely ever realized. Only a 
 few like Zell, Mentel, and Schoeffer became successful merchants of books on 
 dogmatic theology. It was soon discovered that printing could not be supported 
 by ecclesiastics. The printers who had been induced to set up presses in mon- 
 asteries did not long remain there, nor did the offices which they left prosper for 
 many years. Books of devotion were never in greater request, but books published 
 by the Church did not fully meet the popular want. 
 
 Nearly all the books printed by Gutenberg and Schceffer were in the Latin 
 language. Whether they overlooked the fact that there was an actual need 
 for books in German, or whether they were restrained in an attempt to print in 
 German, cannot be decided. Other publishers saw the need, and disregarded 
 the restraint, if there was any, to the great inquietude of ecclesiastics, who seem 
 to have had forewarning of the mischief that would be made by types. On the 
 fourth day of January , 1486, Berthold, the Archbishop of Mentz, issued a man- 
 date in which he forbade all persons from printing, publishing, buying or 
 selling books translated from the Greek or Latin, or any other language, before 
 the written transition had been approved by a committee from the faculty 
 of the University of Mentz. The penalties were excommunication, co?ifiscation 
 of the books, and a fine of 100 fiorins of gold. 
 
 In Italy the revival of classical literature opened a new field for the pub- 
 lisher, but the demand for Latin authors was limited. In this country, and in 
 others, eagerness for books in the native language was manifested for books 
 that plain people could read for books that represented the life and thoughts of 
 the living and not of the dead. 
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 
 
125 
 
 LONG PRIMER No. n ITALIC. Li-:\m i>. 
 
 " /TTO lend or not to lend" is the first question which the book-lover 
 _JL has to propound to himself. Some great men and many little 
 men have lent their books freely and frequently. Most of the great book- 
 lovers those who adore books as books have rigidly refused to part 
 with any of the volumes from their treasure-houses, guarding them as 
 jealously as the Turk his harem ; some have even gone to the extreme of 
 letting no profane eye fall within the sacred depths of the bookcase. Car- 
 lyle was one of the great men of our scribbling century, and he was free 
 with his books. When Dickens wanted to get up the facts for the frame- 
 work of u A Tale of Two Cities" he consulted Carlyle as to the chief books 
 he should read to master the feeling and the sayings and doings of the 
 period. While he was expecting an answer, a cart drove up before his 
 house, full of books about the French Revolution ; and Carlyle had sent 
 it. The great Grotier himself, ivhose taste in binding has caused his 
 books to be sought for, marked their sides with the motto, "Io. Grolerii et 
 amicor urn," denoting that they were the property of Grolier and his friends. 
 But the records of history are like the law reports : if you search dili- 
 gently you can generally find a case on the other side. The man who dis- 
 likes and absolutely refuses to lend his books has never hidden his light 
 under a bushel ; indeed, he has been trout to noise his vice abroad. And 
 one is justified surely in refusing to lend a unique volume, or a book 
 in any way difficult to replace. No man has really a right to ask us to 
 lend that copy of Footers plays with the neat signature of Samuel John- 
 son on the title ; or that copy of the " Thedtre de j\L Quinault" with the 
 name of Mile. Glair on stamped in gold on its dark calf cover ; or any 
 missal of the thirteenth century by some monkish /mud most delicately 
 wrought. The man who could lend that book to bis fellow-man without 
 a sinister motive is made of something more than mortal flesh and 
 blood. It is too much to ask. But the book of to-day the book in 
 print, the book of commerce, which can be had anywhere, surely it were 
 churlish to decline to lend this to a friend. I keep my own ordinary 
 books open to all. Any man may take one down from the shelves and 
 permission asked and granted may take it home with him. There is 
 no denying that now and again one of my books fails to come home to roost. 
 But I prefer this to a selfish denial of the light of literature to some way- 
 faring friend. Yet I have my rules. I never lend a book which I can- 
 not replace. I never lend a book of reference which I may need myself 
 while it is out. I never lend one volume of a set. I never lend without 
 taking a receipt, signed by the borrower. I never lend a book to a man 
 whom I know to be untidy, or careless, or inconsiderate. And by means 
 of these rules I am enabled to reconcile my conscience to the individual 
 ownership of books. 
 
 ARTHUR PENN. 
 
126 
 LONG PRIMER LAW ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 ~\f*0 feature of early printing is more unwork- 
 J V m.anlike than that of composition. Imitating 
 the style of the manuscript copy,^ the compositor 
 huddled together words and paragraphs in solid 
 columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to 
 press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads, 
 and paging- figures. The space for the ornamental 
 borders and letters of the illuminator seems ex- 
 travagant when contrasted with the pinched spaces 
 between lines and words. The printer trusted to 
 the bright colors of the illuminator to give relief to 
 the blackness of the types, not knowing that a 
 purer relief and greater perspicuity would have 
 been secured by a wider spacing of the words and 
 lines. The obscurity produced by huddled and 
 over-black types was increased by the neglect of 
 simple orthographical rules. Proper names were 
 printed with or without capitals, apparently to suit 
 the whim of the compositor. The comma, colon, and 
 period, the only points of punctuation in general 
 use, were employed capriciously and illogically. 
 Crooked and unevenly spaced lines and errors of 
 arrangement or making-up were common. Madden 
 has pointed out several gross blunders, caused by 
 the transpositio^^ of lines and pages, and an erro- 
 neous calculation of the space that should be occu- 
 pied by print. Words were mangled in division, 
 and in the display of lines in capital letters, in a 
 manner that seems inexcusable. 
 
 But no usage of the early compositor has proved 
 more annoying to modern students than his law- 
 less use of abbreviations. Imitating the pernicious 
 example of Procrustes, he made the words fit, chop- 
 ping them off on any letter or in any position, alike 
 indifferent to the wants of the reader and to the 
 proprieties of language. Whatever opinion may be 
 entertained concerning the deterioration of print- 
 ing in other branches, it is, beyond all cavil, cer- 
 tain that in the art of arranging types so that the 
 meaning of the author shall be made lucid, the 
 modern compositor is much the more intelligent 
 mechanic. 
 
127 
 ELZEVIR ITALIC BODY 8. LEADED. 
 
 f ~J~*HE "'Publishers' Weekly" has been devoting considerable space to the defense 
 I of books with cut edges or perhaps we should say to the defense of the prac- 
 tice against the assertions of an anonymous correspondent; for cut edges are so gener- 
 ally preferred that they may be said to need no defense. 
 
 All the ordinary arguments in behalf of cut edges are unanswerable. Books with 
 cut edges are indisputably more convenient to read than those with uncut edges until 
 after the book-folder has gone through them. Cut edges, have greater adaptability ; they 
 save labor ; they are, let us admit, the result of plain, practical common sense ; and 
 people with plain, practical common sense may claim to have the best of the argument. 
 
 Uncut edges of books are simply and exclusively a matter of taste, and nothing else ; 
 and the difficulty is, that it is almost impossible to show why they should be preferred 
 even on the ground of taste. If any reader accustomed to handling books does not feel 
 and see the superior beauty of the uncut page, there is no human method by which it 
 can be demonstrated to him. It is no more communicable than the sense of color is 
 communicable to one who does not possess it. The color sense in some cases, however, 
 can be cultivated; and a person with a good natural sense of what is truly artistic 
 may he brought to see wherein the superiority of the uncut book lies, if he will take the 
 trouble to carefully compare the two kinds. It is only in this, as in some other things, 
 that "seeing is believing." 
 
 The book-lover finds an indescribable charm and freshness in the uncut page that 
 is never present after the sheets have been plowed by the binder. It is not merely be- 
 cause the margin is reduced for this objection can be met by having the original 
 margin sufficiently bioad to permit the edges to be cut without in that particular sen- 
 sibly injuring the book. It is because the virgin purity of the page, the sense of fresh 
 beauty which it originally possessed, is lost. Every one who is accustomed to see the 
 folded sheets of a book before it is bound, and the same sheets after they have been 
 squeezed, crushed, and subjected to the butcbering-knife of the binder, must feel, if be 
 possesses a sense of beauty, that a certain very inviting quality in the page has been 
 extinguished. The most accomplished book-maker in this country once remarked to 
 the writer that, in comparing cut and uncut copies of the same edition of a book, he 
 found a difference which he was utterly unable to account for the paper, the ink, the 
 printing, everything about the uncut copies seemed so much superior. Now, the writer 
 has made this test many times, and it never has failed. To him a cut book is always 
 despoiled of something. It is necessary, of course, for publishers to send out books with 
 cut edges ; but it is always done, in his judgment, at the sacrifice of certain elements 
 of beauty. In all cases where utility is the first consideration, let the edges be 
 trimmed ; in all other cases, where it is permissible to consider style and beauty, to 
 consider things that invite and charm the eye, let the edges be left untrimmed. Even 
 when books are bound in leather, if the tops only are cut and gilded, and the side and 
 bottom margins left untouched, the effect is very much better. 
 
 The charm of the uncut page is thus an impression upon the mind merely. There is 
 no argument for it but that of beauty, and all persons to whom this does not appeal will 
 probably laugh at what ice have said. Practical common sense is always disposed to 
 laugh at things it cannot understand; but there is a culture to which practical com- 
 mon sense, so called, is often nothing more than barren Philistinism; and to those 
 who have this taste the laugh of the Philistines is known to come from insufficient 
 
 knowledge. 
 
 APPLE-TON'S LITERARY BULLETIN. 
 
128 
 BOURGEOIS No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 HAMILTON severely criticizes fashionable tastes in house furnishing. 
 He says : " Unhappily Eastlake and the Household Art Rooms on Tremont 
 street have diffused a malign influence throughout New England. Attitudinizing 
 tyrannizes over taste. The simple and modest nomenclature of the fathers has 
 given place to a baneful technology. Boston takes the honest old color we have 
 lived in all our days, christens it Pompeiian red, and instantly feels herself suffused 
 with a classic glow. She rises to the high art of bringing her breakfast tea on a 
 lotus leaf and her ice-water in a pond lily, and sits down harder than ever on 
 her three hills as the Athens of America forgetting that the Athens of Greece in 
 her highest art days drank her Samian wine out of black and red Beverly pottery. 
 She pilfers from our simple grandfathers their stout hinges and palpable nails, 
 and plumes herself upon exhibiting to the world for the first time a ' sincere' 
 door! At one time the mania is Turkish toweling. At another time it is but- 
 terflies on burlap. Again the fiat goes forth that you are a heathen man and a 
 publican unless your cttrtains are all ring-streaked and spotted. But whether it 
 is tiles or toweling, Chinese junk or Japanese fans, it is a close corporation of 
 household art, outside of which there shall be only weeping and wailing and 
 gnashing of teeth by Goths and Vandals. Now the outside barbarians are willing 
 to grant the art, but they a little resent the assumption. One of our most charming 
 writers, the author of i Aspendale,' 1 has said that luxuries are graceful only in 
 so far as they are necessities. Similarly it may be said that art is artistic only 
 when it is artless. We do not particularly object to gods and little fishes scattered 
 around in Majolica, but when a marts whole air and bearing says, ' Go to ; 
 art is great, and I am its prophet ! ' we want to throw his bric-a-brac at his 
 head. We would rather he should be modest and sham just a little, than be so 
 arrogantly ''sincere.'"' 
 
 The "New York Times' 111 shows how a much better taste may be displayed 
 by the selection of books instead of useless bric-a-brac : " After all the talk about 
 hangings, and dados, and cornices, cabinets of china, and even pictures, there is 
 nothing which does so much to furnish a room we do not say a fine drawing- 
 room, but a parlor used for the daily gatherings of the household and of friends 
 as shelves of prettily bound, neatly kept, and well-arranged books. Nothing ex- 
 presses more of real refinement, or tells more plainly of the home enjoyments of a 
 cultivated family. Furniture, piano-fortes, pictitres, may be bought by order in 
 a week, but books in any noticeable number, which seem to belong in the rooms 
 where they are found, must be the rtsult of accumulation. Their rows are the 
 tree-avenues which mark the residence of the aristocracy of mental culture. True, 
 a collection of book* may be bought in a lump, but when they are so obtained they 
 never seem to belong where they are set up for show, but to be a part of a bookseller's 
 stock out of place, which, indeed, they are. But books have a value in the fur- 
 nishing of a room merely from the masses of color that they afford. They may 
 be thrust upon the shelves in such a heedless, disorderly way that they produce a 
 distracting effect, both on the eye and on the mind ; but arranged with due regard 
 to harmony and contrast of color, and to^ize and proportion, a small collection, 
 even half a dozen shelves, is a very attractive object, and in larger masses their 
 effect is very rich and pleasing, almost imposing." 
 
129 
 
 BOURGEOIS No. 11 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 riME was when Americans were insatiable consumers of cheap books, and it was 
 quite impossible to procure any substantial, dignified works in standard liter- 
 ature issued in American dress that could satisfy a fastidious taste accustomed to 
 the elegance an'd scholarly appearance of English publications. Now the English 
 are the makers of cheap books, and some of the best editions of standard English 
 authors are the products of American presses and binderies, while every ichere is 
 heard the complaint among American publishers that it is impossible to publish 
 new books without incurring such risks as make the one successful book simply a 
 makeweight for a dozen unsuccessful ones. As the case now appears, standard books 
 manufactured in America compete favorably with the same works manufactured in 
 England their style is often better and the price is lower ; miscellaneous books 
 (that is, new ventures in literature of every sort), when manufactured in America, 
 whether of home or foreign authorship, compete unfavorably with the same class of 
 books manufactured in England style has to be sacrificed for economy, and then 
 the English price is still below the American. 
 
 In consequence of this state of things American authors, when their special studies 
 and qualifications have not led them into the preparation of professional books, have 
 found the magazines their main resource, and in this channel is now running the 
 current of new American literature. Here the people find their cheap books, the pub- 
 lishers their field of activity, and the authors their only chance for a hearing. 
 
 That the life of American literature is setting in this direction finds evidence in 
 the keen rivalry which is rising between the magazines, and the struggle for existence 
 which is the lot of them all, in one form or another. We do not believe that com- 
 petition produces excellence, or stimulates indeed the best efforts ; on the contrary, 
 its first effect is to push forward show and noise to the front seats ; yet the turning 
 of money and energy and managerial skill into this channel undoubtedly makes a 
 better chance for the author with a really good work to get a hearing and a prompt 
 representation. The danger, as intimated above, is twofold: that the editor and 
 publisher will be eager for articles which by their brilliancy, or by some taking 
 quality, may give a prominence to the magazine, and that authors, under the somewhat 
 feverish impulse which magazine writing gives, shall write for the current month and 
 not for all time. Hut these are dangers tvnich lie near the surface. There remains 
 the substantial fact that the monthly issues of the various magazines give a chance to 
 the poet, the romancer, the philosopher, the discoverer, not to be found elsewJiere. A 
 true poem is printed in a magazine to be read by its hundred thousand readers, caught 
 up by the newspaper press, ever lying in wait for novelties, and read by tens of hun- 
 dreds of thousands. A novel which might otherwise amuse for an evening a few 
 thousand readers, is the monthly freshener of life for multiplied thousands, and the 
 thoughts confided to so frail a vessel are carried safely to countless homes. 
 
 What the magazine is yet to do, in what new ark literature will find its safety 
 these are questions to speculate upon. Enough now to know that he who writes for 
 the monthly magazine is discovering that he must give his best, and no longer treat 
 with contempt a vessel which bears the nation's best hopes ; that he who edits and 
 publishes begins to find that his function is not mean, but that weak things are 
 confounding the mighty, and the magazine, that seems to be forever dying to make 
 room for a new birth, has permanence and might because it is the one means now 
 left in America of giving the best we have to the most in number. 
 
130 
 BREVIER No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 T~^\UJ?ING the past two years from eight thousand five hundred to nine thotisand 
 J J manuscripts were annually submitted to " The Century Magazine"" for publication. 
 This is an increase over previous years, and does not include, the hundreds, perhaps thou- 
 sands, of propositions submitted with regard to articles. As there has been an increase in 
 the number of periodicals published in America of late years, and as the neivspapers are 
 publishing more contributions than ever by writers not on the regular staff, evidently there 
 has been an increase in literary activity at least in proportion to the increase in population. 
 
 Now out of nine thousand manuscripts a year " The Century " can only possibly print 
 four hundred or less. It follows that editing a magazine is not unlike walking into a garden 
 of Jloivers and gathering a single bouquet. In other words, not to accept an article, a story, 
 a poem, is not necessarily to "reject" it. There may be weeds in the garden, there must 
 be weeds in the garden, but the fact that a particular blossom is not gathered into the 
 monthly bouqiiet does not prove that the editor regarded the blossom as a weed, and therefore 
 passed it by. It would be impossible to sweep all the flowers into a single handful. The 
 "rejected" or "declined" are naturally prone to gibe at sympathetic or apologetic words 
 from editorial sources ; so we present the above simile with diffidence. There is truth in it, 
 nevertheless ! And it would be much easier for editors to mnke up a number of bouquets 
 from the flowers at their disposal than to gather the single one for which alone they have room. 
 
 The general impression of a lifelong reader of manuscripts is that the quality does not 
 deteriorate that, in fact, it improves. Such a reader, moreover, is greatly impressed by the 
 wide diffusion of literary ability. There are certainly very many more people who can 
 write a good story, a good descriptive paper, a good essay, a good poem, than there were, say, 
 twenty years ago. An old manuscript reader is inclined, in fact, to be very optimistic. Even 
 Mr. Howells^s recent extraordinary praise of current literature may not seem to such a reader 
 as so very far out of the way. Btit after the old manuscript reader has expressed himself 
 thus optimistically he is entitled to his ' buts." He may even permit himself to ask whether 
 the literary artist of our day has not caught somewhat of the hurry, the immediateness, of the 
 time ; whether, indeed, the present age is not too present with us ; whether there is the slow, 
 determined, sure, artistic work which made the successful careers of the earlier generation of 
 American poets, romancists, and essayists. There surely is siich work, but is it as general 
 as it should be? and, if not, is this one reason that there are not more literary reputations in 
 the new generation commensurate with those of the old? 
 
 At least the old manuscript reader may, by reason of his age, if nothing else, be pardoned 
 should he at times look over his spectacles at the young manuscript writer and say : " Yoking 
 man, young woman, you have talent, you have indtistry , you have knowledge, you have a 
 fine, large audience eagerly waiting for you ; all you need is to respect still more highly your 
 own unusual parts . Ponder over, perfect your work ; be not in too great haste to bring it to 
 the eye of the editor, to the eye of the public. Regard each pccm, each story, as a step in 
 your literary career ; let it not leave your hand till you have done your very best with it. If 
 you intend it to be a genuine work of art, make it so if you can. This may seem a slow 
 process, but it may prove the speediest in results. And remember that even an editor is 
 mortal, and, like eve>y other mortal, entitled to his proportion of mistakes^" 
 
 Conscientious work is not necessarily artistic work, as many a poor devil has found ottt too 
 late. But it may be. The heart comes first a warm heart and a cool head, says Joseph 
 Jefferson but heart without art is of no avail. The literary artist need not think sor- 
 didly on his or her "career" and yet may cherish that decent regard for repute, that love 
 of artistic perfection, which will bring the rewards of conscience and of honorable fame. 
 At the least the literary artist should be ashamed to do less well than in him lies. He should 
 not niggle and polish for the love of niggling and polishing ; but he should be remorseless 
 in self -correction for the love of truth, and art, and beatify. 
 
 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 
 
BREVIER No. n ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 TIT" OT finding in the books any definition of news, as the newspaper maker and 
 J_\ newspaper reader understand the word, I asked a number of journalists to 
 define the commodity in which they deal, and out of the correspondence which followed 
 was evolved this definition : "News is an unpublished event of present interest" 
 
 It is an event, rather than a fact or circumstance, because it contains the element of 
 happening. It is unpublished, in the sense that it is unknown to the readers of the 
 newspaper whose editor contemplates its publication. It is of present interest present, 
 because it changes existing conditions or impressions ; and of interest, because it affects 
 either the heart or the pocket-book of humanity. 
 
 An event which fulfills these three conditions is news, irrespective of time or locality. 
 Both Livingstone and Unyanyembc died in Africa. The world did not hear of the death 
 of the explorer until months after it occurred. Time did not affect the character of the 
 news. The world never heard of the death of the negro. Locality did not affect the 
 character of the news. That which did affect the news-character of both events was 
 their relative value. 
 
 Editing a newspaper is the process of weighing news. No newspaper ever prints all 
 the news, although many advertise to do so. Events which are printed arc those which 
 the editor believes to be of the greatest interest to the greatest number accustomed to read 
 his journal ; and the lengths and positions allotted to the items, as they appear in the 
 journal, illustrate the editor's notion of the public's estimate of tln-ir /v/ ////'//// mines as 
 news. While the editor edits the newspaper, the public edits the editor ; hence it follows 
 that the public, so greatly given to grimaces over the perusal of its follies, possesses full 
 power to season its news to its own taste. 
 
 WJiat is the total annual cost of maintaining a great newspaper f An answer to this 
 question would be of interest if the answer were accurate. It is said that for special 
 despatches alone some journals expend from five to twelve thousand dollars a month, 
 while the regular press despatches cost nearly as much more. The cost of the " local" 
 news far exceeds that of both the special and press despatches. When news is delivered 
 upon the news-editor's desk it has then to be edited, and editors' services command vari- 
 ously from twenty-five to one hundred dollars a week. White paper bills cut a big 
 figure in the outlay of the newspaper publisher. The New York " World" is said to 
 expend above six hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for this purpose alone. 
 Compositors' and proof-readers' wages amount to from two thousand to six thousand dol- 
 lars a week, and a new dress of type must be purchased every year or two, costing in 
 some instances twelve to fifteen thousand dollars. 
 
 Newspapers have two sources of income, advertisements and sales of copies. Tlie 
 former is greater than the latter, but not in a proportion so overwhelming as is generally 
 supposed. Most dailies in our largest cities realize an income in about the proportion 
 of two-thirds from advertising to one-third from subscriptions and sales. 
 
 Never before was newspaper competition so fierce as now. Vast investments are at 
 stake, and the best brains are commanded at salaries which, already high, are steadily 
 growing higher. Yet here is the opinion of Mr. George W. Childs : "In my twenty- 
 five years' experience I have never seen a daily newspaper injured by competition. If 
 a paper degenerates, as many have done within my recollection, the cause is always to 
 be found inside, not outside, its own office. I have seen one publisher take another pub- 
 lisher's business, never, though, because of the superior ability of the former, but always 
 because of the marked incompetence of the latter. Daily papers sometimes die of dry- 
 rot, sometimes reach the sheriff's hands through political blunders, internal quarrels, or 
 jealous ambitions ; but a paper that is successful, wide awake, and honest can never be 
 injured by competition, however fierce." 
 
 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 
 
132 
 
 MINION No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. MINION No. 11 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 /T has been urged with pertinacity that the "managing editor," the executive officer of the 
 editorial leader should be signed by the newspaper, is the really responsible party. Ifotv 
 writer, and unresponsive pity has been called upon dare an editorial writer advance an original 
 to rise in behalf of the man whose talents find no opinion on a subject of national importance 
 recognition in the anonymity of the daily press, when the chief executive on the other side of the 
 For my part, I know of nothing more unfortimate partition has received il specials" from Wash- 
 than would be such a change in custom, and I sin- ington and every State capital giving the views 
 cerely hope the desire for change, for the unusual, of men of all shades of opinion on the issue in- 
 will not lead to its adoption generally. The volved, many of them speaking with an authority 
 potency of the editorial "we" has suffered enough which readers will accept as conclusive ? Why 
 in the last dozen years without this final blow, and venture to discuss the prospects of European 
 that it has retained its power at all has been due war, when Bismarck' 's opinions, construed by 
 to the willingness of great minds to sacrifice the Salisbury, may be had for money paid to main- 
 reputation for the advantages of the freedom of tain a social lion as correspondent in London ? 
 the anonymous form. The decadence of newspaper The editor of the metropolitan journal is driven 
 influence would follow the change almost inev- to discuss phases instead of the subject-matter, 
 itably, and the fault would be the writer's, not the or, perhaps, devotes himself to praise of the en- 
 reader's. An appeal to all who use their pens as terprise that has obtained the important expres- 
 bread-winners would, I think, bring a response sion found in our news columns of this date ! 
 that the sense of responsibility is not less when The editorial writer has, alas ! not even the 
 the writer is unidentified, while a broader view is title of ''editor" in some cases, and the con- 
 commonly taken and more courage shown in the ductor of more than one powerful journal to-day 
 expression of opinions which may provoke dis- never puts pen to paper. 
 
 pute, yet may, none the less, be eternally true. That the editorial page may soon disappear 
 The tendency of the individual is to avoid quar- altogether is a dreadful possibility : and if it is 
 rel, and the avoidance of quarrels is the gravest to be committed to the care of the elegant essayist, 
 of newspaper blunders. To arouse some antagon- writing over his own signature, there willremain 
 isms is almost as necessary as to make friendships, no reason for its existence in its present form, 
 in a progressive journal. The pressure for space in every great daily is 
 
 Journalists should need no warning, however, severe, and it now requires a stern front to hold 
 against the use of the first person singular, in the three or four columns sacred for editorial 
 view of the decline of the editorial which most of utterances. Give the news editor his opportunity 
 them are aware of, though not so many will ad- and he will abolish the essayist without a qualm 
 mit it. If Mr. Matthew Arnold had not spoken, of conscience. 
 
 one might appeal to the average citizen for con- Yet one, cannot see the approaching doom of a 
 firmation of 'the declaration that the editorial has, department in journalism so powerful as this 
 in fact, declined. By this let it not be supposed without an effort to avert it. A force so poten- 
 that the leader is not so able (to use a favorite Hal as the daily newspaper should be something 
 newspaper word) as in the earlier days, for a com- more than the mirror of events which the execu- 
 parison of the editorial page of to-day with the tive forces of journalism are making it. Let 
 page of twenty years ago shows no falling off , but them pursue their glorious career undisturbed 
 rather a gain in method and matter. It is simply and hire tJie Prince of Wales for special society 
 that the editorial is not read with the attention correspondence, or the Pope for theological dis- 
 once given it, that it is now merely one depart- cussion, if they can; but let the editorial "we" 
 ment of the newspaper, receiving the consideration remain. The leader writer must, however, give 
 of the subscriber if his norse-car journey happens in this ivork a cause for his existence, and that 
 to be long enough. Of course a good deal of this can be found only by some change in method, 
 neglect has been due to the increased size of the There have been occasions when an editorial 
 more prosperous papers and the vast extension of expression of opinion might have been of tre- 
 the field they cover. The news columns are so mendous value, backed by that mysterious ano- 
 much more interesting than they used to be ! But nymity of which I have spoken. There should 
 there have been other causes at work, and the be, it seems to me, a thorough study of current 
 great increase of personalism the word is used public agitations by editorial writers who now 
 in a broad sense is to blame for the loss of re- avoid them, or, worse yet, slur them over with 
 sped for the purely editorial utterance. The vague generalities. 
 
 W. T. HUNT. 
 
133 
 NONPAREIL No. 20 ITALIC. LEADED. NONPAREIL No. 22 ITALIC. LEADED. 
 
 TN Eckermann's " Conversations with Goethe" any common trunlc. The only sign that looks in the 
 
 -L that poet is represented as having said, in Jan- slightest degree in this direction is the offering of two 
 
 uary, 1827, that the time for separate national litera- courses in Greek and Latin jointly, only one of 
 
 tures had gone by. " National literature," he said, which, however, is given thin year, of three in Ger- 
 " is now a rather unmeaning phrase ; the epoch of manic Philology collectively, and seven in Romance 
 
 World-Literature is at hand, and each one must do Philology collectively. 
 
 what he can to hasten its approach." Then he points No study seems to me to hold less place in ouruni- 
 
 out that it will not be saf<? to select any one literature versifies, as a rule, than that of literature viewed in 
 
 as affording a pattern or model; or that, if it is, this any respect as an art; all tends to the treatment of 
 
 model must necessarily be the Greek. All the rest, it as a department of philology on the one side or of 
 
 he thought t must be looked at historically, we appro- history on the other ; and even wliere it is studied and 
 
 priaiingfrom each the best that can be employed. training is really given in it, it is almost always a 
 
 If this vvorld-literature be really the ultimate aim, training that begins and ends with English tradition 
 it is something to know that we are at least getting and method. It may call itself "Rhetoric and Eng~ 
 so far as to interchange freely the national models. Hsh Composition," but the one of these subdivisions 
 The ctirrent London literature is French in its forms is as essentially English as the other. It not only 
 and often in its frivolity ; while the French critics recognizes the English language as the vehicle to be 
 have lately discovered Jane Austen, and are try- used which is inevitable but it does not go behind 
 ing to find in that staid and exemplary lady the the English for its methods, standards, or illustra- 
 founder of the realistic school and the precursor of tions. There is at Harvard a professorship of Art 
 Zola. During our Centennial Exposition I asked a but this means plastic art alone; and there is a 
 Swedish commissioner if Fredrika Brewer's works pr of essor ship of Belles- Lettren, but only as an adjunct 
 were still read in Sweden. He said that they were to the French and Spanish languages and litera- 
 not; and when I asked what had taken their place, tures ; and moreover this professorship is vacant, 
 he answered, "Bret Hartt and Mark Twain." That there is such a thing as training in thought 
 Among contemporary novelists Mr. Howells places and literary expression quite apart from all na- 
 the Russian first, then the Spanish, ranking the tional limitations this may be recognized here and 
 English, and even the French, far lower. He is here in the practice of our colleges, but very rarely 
 also said, in a recent interview, to have attributed in their framework and avowed method, 
 his own style largely to the influence of Heine. But And, strange to say, this deficiency, if it be one, 
 Heine himself, in the preface to his " Deutschland," has only been increased by the increased differentia- 
 names as his own especial models A ristophanes, Cer- tion and specialization of our higher institutions, 
 vantes, and Moliere a Greek, a Spaniard, and a Whatever the evils of the old classical curriculum, it 
 Frenchman. Goethe himself thinks we cannot com- had at least this merit, that it included definite t'n- 
 prehend Calderon without Hafiz, and Fitzgerald struction in the fundamental principles of literature 
 takes us all back, certainly with great willingness on as literature. So long as young men read Quin- 
 the reader's part, to Omar Khayyam. Surely, the tilian and Aristotle, although they may have missed 
 era of a world-literature must be approaching. much that was more important, they retained the 
 
 Yet in looking over the schedules of our universi- conception of a literary discipline that went behind all 
 ties, one finds as little reference to a coming world- nationalities ; that was neither ancient nor modern, 
 literature as if no one had hinted at the dream, but universal. I heartily believe, for one, in the in- 
 There is an immense increase of interest in the study troduction of the modern elective system ; what I re- 
 of languages, no doubt ; and all this prepares for an gret is that, in this general breaking up and rear- 
 interchange of national literatures, not for merging ranging, the preparation for a world-literature has 
 them in one. The interchange is a good preliminary been so far left out. If Goethe's view is correct and 
 stage, no doubt, but the preparation for a world-lit- who stands for the modern world if Goethe does not ? 
 erature must lie in the study of those methods of then no one is fitted to give the higher literary train- 
 thought, those canons of literary art, which lie at the ing in our colleges who has not had some training in 
 foundation of all literatures, fhe thought and its world-literature for himself. 
 
 expression these are the two factors which must And observe that Goethe himself is compelled to 
 
 solve the problem ; and it matters not how much we recognize the fact that in this world-literature, 
 
 translate or overset as the Germans felicitously whether ice ivill or no, wemust recognize the excep- 
 
 say so long as we go no deeper and do not grasp tional position of the Greek product. The supremacy 
 
 at wJtat all literatures have in common. Thus in of the Greek in scidpture is not more unequivocal 
 
 the immense range of elective studies at Harvard than in literature. To treat this supremacy as some- 
 
 University there are fifteen distinct courses in thing accidental like the long theologic sicay of the 
 
 Greek, fourteen in Latin, and twenty each in Eng- Hebrew and Chaldeeis to look away from a world- 
 
 lish, French, and German : but not a single course literature. It is as if an ambitious sculptor were to 
 
 among them which pertains to a world-liter at^lre, decide, to improve his studio by throwing his Venus 
 
 or even recognizes that these various branches have of Milo upon the ash-heap. 
 
134 
 ELZEVIR BODY 14. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 THE ART OF BOOKKEEPING. 
 
 How hard when those who do not wish 
 To lend (that 's give) their books, 
 
 Are snared by anglers (folks who fish) 
 With literary hooks, 
 
 Who call and take some favorite tome, 
 
 But never read it through ! 
 Thus they commence a set at home 
 
 By making one at you. 
 
 I, of my Spenser quite bereft, 
 Last winter sore was shaken ; 
 
 Of Lamb I've but a quarter left 
 Nor could I save my Bacon. 
 
135 
 
 PICA No. 20. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 BOOKS are a part of man's prerogative, 
 In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold, 
 That we to them our solitude may give, 
 And make time present travelled that of old. 
 Our life, Fame pierceth at the end, 
 And books if farther backward do extend. 
 
 SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. 
 
 GIVE me 
 
 Leave to enjoy myself. That place that does 
 Contain my books, the best companions, is 
 To me a glorious court, where hourly I 
 Converse with the old sages and philosophers ; 
 And sometimes, for variety, I confer 
 With kings and emperors and weigh their counsels ; 
 Calling their victories, if unjustly got, 
 Unto a strict account, and in my fancy 
 Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then 
 Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace 
 Uncertain vanities ? No ; be it your care 
 To augment a heap of wealth : it shall be mine 
 To increase in knowledge. 
 
 FLETCHER. 
 
136 
 SMALL PICA No. n. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 THE SCHOLAE. 
 
 HIM was lever* have at his bed's head 
 Twenty bookes, clothed in black or red, 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophy, 
 Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltry. 
 But all be that he was a philosopher, 
 Yet hadde he but little gold in coffer, 
 But all that he might of his friende's bent 
 On bookes and learning he it spent, 
 And busily 'gan for the soule's pray 
 Of them that gave him to scholar y. 
 Of study took he moste care and heed, 
 Not a word spoke he more than was need; 
 And that was said in form and reverence, 
 And short and quick, and full of high sentence, 
 Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, 
 And gladly would he learn and gladly teach. 
 
 * Rather. 
 
137 
 
 ELZEVIR BODY 10. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 MY days among the Dead are pass'd : 
 
 Around me I behold, 
 Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
 
 The mighty minds of old ; 
 My never-failing friends are they, 
 With whom I converse day by day. 
 
 With them I take delight in weal, 
 
 And seek relief in woe ; 
 And while I understand and feel 
 
 How much to them I owe, 
 My cheeks have often been bedew'd 
 With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 
 
 My thoughts are with the Dead : with them 
 
 I live in long-past years ; 
 Their virtues love, their faults condemn, 
 
 Partake their hopes and fears, 
 And from their lessons seek and find 
 Instruction with an humble mind. 
 
 My hopes are with the Dead : anon 
 
 My place 'with them will be, 
 And 1 with them shall travel on 
 
 Through all Futurity ; 
 Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
 That will not perish in the dust. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
 
138 
 
 LONG PRIMER No. 20. DOUBLE LEADED. 
 
 MRS. HANNAH MORE'S CONUNDRUM. 
 
 I 'M strange contradictions: I 'm new and I 'm old, 
 
 I 'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold; 
 
 Though I never could read, yet lettered I 'm found, 
 
 Though blind I enlighten, though loose I am bound; 
 
 I 'm always in black and I 'm always in white, 
 
 I am grave and I 'm gay, I am heavy and light. 
 
 In form, too, I differ I 'm thick and I 'm thin, 
 
 I Ve no flesh and no bone, yet I 'm covered with skin; 
 
 I Ve more points than the compass, more stops than the flute, 
 
 I sing without voice, without speaking confute ; 
 
 I 'm English, I 'm German, I 'm French, and I 'm Dutch; 
 
 Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much. 
 
 I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages, 
 
 And no monarch alive has so many pages. 
 
139 
 
 SMALL PICA GREEK. LEADED.* 
 
 Asysiai 6 9s(U<3TOxXyj<;, NsoxXsooc oioc, OOTGO 
 
 _/ \_ elvai, xal Trpd^soov [isYaXcov OTTO tplXori{ila<; spaoTYjc, wars vsoc wv 
 STL, TTJC sv Mapaft&vt {idXYjc rcpoc TOO? pappdcpotx; YSVOJASVYJC, xal TY^C MiX- 
 TidSoo aTpaTYjYiac SLapoyjfrsl'ayjC, aovvooc 6pda$att Ta icoXXa Trpoc saoTio, xal 
 Tac voxTac aYpoTuvslv, xal TOOC TUOTOOC ffapattsfoftat TOO? OOVY]I>=IC, xal 
 XSYSIV Trpoc TOOC spwTwvTag >tai t)-ao|j.dCovTag TYJV irepi rov PLOV {XTa,3oXyjV, 
 cog xa^-SD^stv aoTOV oox scj>Y] TO TOO MtXttdSoo TpoTiaiov. Oi [xsv yap aXXoi 
 if)OVTO TOO TroXsjJLOo T7]v sv Mapat>oovL Twv (3apf&p<ftv i^TTav slvai, 0=- 
 Ss apX'^jv {isiCdvaiv aYoovwv, I'f ' oog iaoTOv oTrsp TY^C oX-qc r EXXd- 
 
 ael, v.cti TYJV TroXtv ^OXSL, 7ropp(o\>=v YJOYJ Trpo^oo/tcov TO jisXXov. 
 Kai TTpwTOV [isv T'/jv AaopicoTixfjV Trpoaooov a^o TOJV apY 
 
 IXdvTcov 'Ad^vaUov Siav^juo^at, |j.ovo? sl~*iv i 
 TOV Sfj[iov, d)g XpTj, TTJV S'.avojj/?]v idaavTag, sx TWV */pr^dr(ov TOOTWV xata- 
 oxsodoaad-at tptujpei^ eirl TOV irpo? AlYtvijta? irdXsjtov. v IIx,|iaC 
 sv T^ e EXXa. (j^dXiaTa, >tal xatst'/ov 01 AiY'.vfjTai irXiijdsi vswv TYJV 
 Xaaaav. r H'. xal paov OcfitaTOVtXy^ aovs^siasv, oo Aapstov, ooSs 
 
 Yap fpav OOTOL, xai sog oo Tcdv) pspa'.ov we a^pt^dfisvot Traps 
 , aXXd TTJ Trpog AiY'.vr^Ta? opYYj xal 'f.XovsLXia TWV TuoXiTwv 
 
 soxaipwc STTI TYJV TrapaaxsuYjv. 'ExaTov Yap OLTTO TO>V 
 sxsivwv sTTOiYj^-Yjaav TpiYJpsi?, a'{ xal rcp&c Ssp^Yjv svaoidXrpav. 'Ex Ss TOO- 
 TOO xaTa (itxpov {>7rdYwv xal xaTap'.pdCwv TYJV TcdXiv TTpoc TYJV ^-dXaaoav, 
 (i)g Ta TrsCd [isv ooSs rote ojxopoic a^'.ojidXooc ovTaq, TY^ S' aTio TOOV v=d>v 
 aXxvj xai TOOC [3appdpooc dfxovaaftai, xal TfjC c EXXdooc apXsiv Sovajj-svooc, 
 dvTl {xovL{ia)v oTuXLTwv, wg <pY]3L IlXdTwv, vaofldTag xal daXaTTiotx; s^oir^s' 
 xal LapoXYjV xa^-' arjTOo TiapsaXsv, d>? apa 9s[iK3roxXr]<; TO Sopo xal TY ( V 
 aaiutSa TWV TroXiTwv TrapsXdjJLSvog, sic oTTYjpsaiov xal XCOTTY^V oovdoTEtXs TOV 
 TOOV 5 A^Y]va'liov SYJJXOV. v E7rpa4s s TaoTa "MiXridooo xpar^ia? avT'.XsYovTOC. 
 El {xsv Y] TYJV axptpsLav xal TO xa^-apov TOO TroXiTsofiaToq sjiXa^sv, Y) ;iY r 
 Tipdiac, SCJTW (piXoao'fWTSpoo STUWXOTTSIV. c '6v. ' YJ TOTS aooTYjpia TOIC 
 iv sx TYJ? ^aXAoor^ &irJ)ps, xal TYJV 'A^vaicav TudXiv Xo8-siaav saTYp 
 oav at Tptyjpei? sxsivat, Ta T' aXXa, xal Esp^Yjs aoTog sjiapTopYps. TY^C 
 Yap TcsCix^c ovd[xsa)(; a^-paoaTOo Sia[j.svooaYjC, s'fOYS (isTa TY^V TWV vswv 
 Y^TTav, cog oox wv a4'.6jxaXoc. Kal MapSoV.ov s^TuoSwv stvat 
 TYjg SLW^SCO? [laXXov, TJ SooX(oa6[xsvov aoTOo?, ooc i{j.ol Soxsi, xaTsXiTrsv. 
 AsysTai ', 5 OXo{X7ui(ov TWV s f f S^YJC aYOfisvcov, xal TrapsX^ovTog sic TO 
 Stov TOO sfuaToxXsooc;, ajj.sAY|aavTa<; TO>V aYwviaTwv TOOC rcapovTac, 
 TYJV YjjJ.spav sxsivov ^-saa^aL, xal TOIC isvoic sTT.Ss'.xvosiv, ajxa 
 xal xpoTOovTag- WCJTS xal aoTOV Yj^svTa Tipoc TOOC r f iXooc 6{xoXoY^aai TOV 
 xapTuov aTusXsiv TWV oTisp T^C c EXXdoc aim]) 
 
 We have this Tischendorf face on english and bourgeois bodies. 
 
 Also, Person Greek on brevier and nonpareil, and Enschede Greek of old-style form on long-primer body. 
 
140 
 
 LONG PRIMER GERMAN No. 90. SOLID. 
 
 (Settler. 
 
 3d) Bin aflfyier erft furje 
 Unb fomme $oll (Ergebenfyeit, 
 (Stnen 9ttann $u fprecfyen unb ju fennen, 
 afle mir mit (Ef)rfurd)t nemten. 
 
 Sure oflid)feit erfreitt mid) fefyr. 
 3fy? fefyt einen 9ftann, txne anbre me^r. 
 ifyr euc^ (onft f^on umget^an? 
 
 <Bd) liter. 
 
 3^ Bttt' euc^, ne^mt end) meiner an ! 
 34 fomme wit atlem guten ?DZnt^ r 
 eiblid)em elb nnb frifc^em 33Iut. 
 9Jietne Gutter wottte mid^ faum entfernen. 
 gern n?a^ 9le(%U ijterauj^en ternen 
 
 X)a (etb tfyr eben re^t am Ort. 
 
 Scpler. 
 
 Stufri^tig, moc^te fc^on n?ieber fort. 
 3n biefen 5D?auern, btefen ftUen, 
 mir feinesmeg^ gefallen ; 
 ift etn gar befdjra'nfter 3lanm, 
 
 fie^t nicfyt3 ritne^, !etnen 33aum, 
 Unb in ben a'len, auf ben 23anten, 
 
 mir ^oren @en unb 3)en!en. 
 
 fommt nnr anf @en?ofynfyeit an. 
 
 nimmt ein ftinb ber SO^ntter 33ruft 
 gtei(^ im Stnfang ttnliig an, 
 balb erna^rt e3 ftc^ mit ^uft. 
 
 anrb'3 en<^ an ber SSei^^eit 23riiften 
 Wit jebem Xage me^r getiiften. 
 
 2tn i^rem QaU mitt id) mit ^reuben ^angen; 
 !Dod) (agt mir nitr, iuie lann ic^ 
 
 (Srllart eu^, ef) i^r meiter a,et)t, 
 ma^It i^r fiir eine gacnltat? 
 
 3d) miinf^te red)t gele^rt ju merben, 
 Unb m6'd)te gern, n>ad auf ber (Erben 
 Unb in bem ^)immel ift erfaffen : 
 Die SBiffenf^aft unb bie 5^atur. 
 
 Xa feib ii)r auf ber rec^ten Spur; 
 
 X)od) miif t i^r eud) nid)t ^erftreuen laffen. 
 
 GOETHE'S FAUST. 
 
141 
 
 LONG PRIMER GERMAN No. 90. LEADED. 
 
 c^uter. 
 
 2$ bin babei mit (SeeP unb eib ! 
 Dod) freiltcfy roitrbe mir befyagen 
 (Sin menig ^reifyeit unb 3ettertreib 
 5ln fcfyonen ommerfeiertagen. 
 
 ebrau$t bcr 3t! fie gefyt fo fcfynell Don tyinnen; 
 
 Docfy Drbnung lefyrt euc^ 3 e ^ gcwinnen. 
 
 9Wctn tfyeurer greunb, id) rat^' euc^ brunt, 
 
 3uerft Collegium Sogicum. 
 
 Da nrirb ber eift euc^ mo|l breffirt, 
 
 3n fpantfc^e tiefeln cingefc^nurt, 
 
 )ajj er bebai^tiger fo fortan 
 
 >infd)Ietcfye bic ebanfenba^n, 
 
 Unb nic^t ettua bic ^reuj unb Quer 
 
 3rrttcfytelire Mn unb ^er. 
 
 lefyret man euc^ manc^en Jag, 
 
 n?a^ i^r fonft auf (Sinen Sc^Iag 
 etrteben, n?ie (Effen unb Xrinfen, fret, 
 Sin^ ! $met ! brei ! baju notfyig fet. 
 3mar tft^ mit bcr ebanfcnfabrif 
 3Bic mit cincm 2Gcbcrmctftcrftii(!, 
 23o Sin Jritt taufcnb ga'bcn rcgt, 
 Die @d^ifflcin ^criibcr fyiniibcr fc^icjcn, 
 Die g^bcn ungefe^en flief en, 
 Sin @cfylag taufenb 3Serbinbungen ftfylagt. 
 Der 5)^ilofo^, ber tritt fyerein 
 Unb bemeift eud^, e^ rniif t 1 fo fein : 
 Da3 erft' war' fo, ba^ jroeite fo, 
 Unb brunt bag britr unb oierte fo ; 
 Unb tuenn bag erft' unb jmeit 1 nic^t war', 
 Dag britt 1 unb tnert 1 war 1 nimmerme^r. 
 Dag preifen bie @(^uler atler Drten, 
 <Sinb aber feine SBeber gemorben. 
 2Ber wiU ttag Sebenbig'g erlennen unb befdjreiben, 
 (Suc^t erft ben eift ^eraugjutreiben ; 
 Dann ^at er bie fyeile in fetner anb, 
 ge^U leiber nur bag geiftige 33anb 
 Encheiresin naturae nennt'g bie Sfyemie, 
 i^rer felbft, unb mei nid^t wie, 
 
 GOETHE'S FAUST. 
 
142 
 
 FRENCH OLD STYLE ON BODY n. LEADED. 
 
 TU viens d'incendier la Bibliotheque ? 
 Oui. 
 
 J'ai mis le feu la. 
 
 Mais c'est un crime inou'i, 
 
 Crime commis par toi centre toi-meme, infame ! 
 
 Mais tu viens de tuer le rayon de ton ame ! 
 
 C'est ton propre flambeau que tu viens de souffler ! 
 
 Ce que ta rage impie et folle ose bruler, 
 
 C'est ton bien, ton tresor, ta dot, ton heritage! 
 
 Le livre, hostile au maitre, est a ton avantage. 
 
 Le livre a toujours pris fait et cause pour toi. 
 
 Une bibllotheqae est an acte de foi 
 
 Des generations tene'breuses encore 
 
 Qui rendent dans la twit tdmoignage a V aware. 
 
 Quoi ! dans ce venerable amas des verites, 
 
 Dans ces chefs-d'oeuvre pleins de foudre et de clartes, 
 
 Dans ce tombeau des temps devenue repertoire, 
 
 Dans les siecles, dans rhomme. antique, dans 1'histoire. 
 
 Dans le passe, legon qu'epelle 1'avenir, 
 Dans ce qui commenga pour ne jamais finir, 
 Dans les poetes ! quoi, dans ce gouffre des bibles, 
 Dans le devin monceau des Eschyles terribles, 
 Des Homeres, des Jobs, debout sur 1'horizon, 
 Dans Moliere, Voltaire et Kant, dans la raison, 
 Tu jettes, miserable, une torche enflammee ! 
 De tout 1'esprit humain tu fais de la fumee ! 
 As-tu done oublie que ton liberateur, 
 C'est le livre ? le livre est la sur la hauteur ; 
 
 [Concluded on next page.] 
 
143 
 
 MODERN FRENCH LIGHT-FACE ON BODY 10. LEADED. 
 
 II luit ; parce qu'il brille et qu'il les illumine 
 
 II detruit 1'echafaud, la guerre, la famine ; 
 
 II parle ; plus d'esclave et plus de paria. 
 
 Ouvre un livre. Platon, Milton, Beccaria. 
 
 Lis ces prophetes, Dante, ou Shakspeare, ou Corneille; 
 
 L'ame immense qu'ils ont en eux, en toi s'eveille ; 
 
 Ebloui, tu te sens le meme homme qu'eux tous ; 
 
 Tu deviens en lisant grave, pensif et doux ; 
 
 Tu sens dans ton esprit tous ces grands hommes croitre ; 
 
 Us t'enseignent ainsi que 1'aube eclaire un cloitre ; 
 
 A mesure qu'il plonge en ton coeur plus avant, 
 
 Leur chaud rayon t'apaise et te fait plus vivant ; 
 
 Ton ame interrogee est prete a leur repondre ; 
 
 Tu te reconnais bon, puis meilleur ; tu sens fondre 
 
 Comme la neige au feu, ton orgueil, tes fureurs, 
 
 Le mal, les prejuges, les rois, les empereurs ! 
 
 Car la science en I' homme arrive la premiere, 
 
 Puis vient la liber te. Toute cette lumiere, 
 
 G'est a toi, comprends done, et c'est toi qui 1'eteins ! 
 
 Les buts reves par toi sont par le livre atteints ! 
 
 Le livre en ta pensee entre, il defait en elle 
 
 Les liens que 1'erreur a la verite mele, 
 
 Gar toute conscience est un noeud gordien. 
 
 // est ton medecin, ton guide, ton gardien. 
 
 Ta haine, il la guerit; ta demence, il te I'dte. 
 
 Voila ce que tu perds, helas, et par ta faute ! 
 
 Le livre est ta richesse a toi! c'est Le savoir, 
 
 Le droit, la verite, la vertu, le devoir, 
 
 Le progres, la raison dissipant tout delire. 
 
 Et tu detruis cela, toi ! 
 
 Je ne sais pas lire. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO, "L'Annee Terrible." 
 
144 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH-FACE ON BODY 12. SOLID. 
 
 El pire inconvenient de cette reclame qui de la page 
 d'annonces est remontee en tete des journaux, 
 c'est qu'elle a tue la critique. Qui done aujourd'hui 
 jette le filet dans le tas des livres inconnus? Qui 
 done tente le tri? Certes, les bonnes volontes et le 
 gout ne font point defaut. Mais le journal, qui aban- 
 donne une si large place an theatre, n'a pas reserve 
 un asile pour le livre. Les moeurs modernes lui ont 
 appris le vrai taux de son concours. II tient ses 
 prix. II ne se croit pas oblige de sacrifier ses interets 
 a 1'amour platonique des lettres. 
 
 Prive des conseils de la critique, le grand public a 
 choisi, hors du journal, les guides de son gout. II 
 s'est remis aux mains des snobs. 
 
 La conversation sur les livres fait partie de la vie 
 elegante, comme la tasse de the de cinq heures. Et 
 il va sans dire que le choix des lectures des snobs est 
 determine par des motifs qui ne sont point la curiosite 
 des idees neuves et du style. Ces gens-la lisent cer- 
 tains auteurs, comme ils s'habillent chez certains cou- 
 turiers, parce que cela est la mode, parce que les elus 
 dont ils re^oivent le mot se fonrnissent a ces adresses. 
 
 Tel quel, le snob est un excellent commis voyageur 
 en renommees. II frequente les plages, les saisons 
 d'eau, tous les rendez-vous des oisifs. Lorsqu'une 
 fois il a retenu un nom, il le repete sans se lasser. 
 
 G'est done a lui que les habiles devront faire la 
 cour. Ils flatteront ses petites manies de correction 
 et de costume. Ils traiteront a son intention Funique 
 sujet ou le snob prenne du plaisir : 1'aventure d'une 
 mondaine elegante qui a un am ant et qui en change. 
 
 A ces conditions le snob se fera le colporteur de 
 vos livres, et vous aurez la chance qu'il arrive ainsi 
 aux mains des simples honnetes gens, de ceux qui ne 
 lisent pas par mode, mais pour leur plaisir, et qui, 
 eux, vous adopteront, une fois pour toutes, si vous 
 les aidez a formuler 1'inconnu qu'ils portent dans 
 leur coeur. 
 
 HUGHES LE Roux, in "Le Figaro." 
 
145 
 
 CONDENSED FRENCH-FACE ON BODY 12. LEADED. 
 
 A UX yeux du public profane, il semble qu'on n'ait a s'occuper 
 _ljL que du format, du papier, du caractere, du nombre de pages, 
 pour que le premier prote venu puisse mener a bien une impres- 
 sion de volume. II en est tout autrement, si Ton sent en soi 
 1' amour .du livre, aussi bien que le respect des traditions. 
 
 II ne faut pas tout d'abord blesser les regies typographiques 
 ni s'y renfermer aveuglement. Le papier une fois choisi, dans 
 le format in-18 ou in -8, il s'agit d'arreter la hauteur de page et 
 la justification, c'est-a-dire. de mettre le texte en harmonie avec 
 les marges ; il convient d'etablir le titre courant, de juger des 
 divers interlignages, de recommencer dix, quinze, vingt fois le 
 type specimen d'une page, observant, critiquant, clignant de 
 1'oeil, jusqu'a ce que la ponderation parfaite ait ete atteinte ; 
 puis, cela fait, viennent les questions des blancs, les fins de 
 chapitres, l'habillage des vignettes et enfin le titre. 
 
 Le titre ! cela semble tout simple, mais rien n'est aussi malaise 
 que de le combiner dans sa perfection, selon les regies de la 
 typographic et du bon gout ; on en compose dix et ce n'est pas 
 cela ; on recommence ; de la capitale on passe au has de casse, 
 du bas de casse a la lettre fantaisiste, on cherche dans le moderne, 
 dans Yelzevir, dans la renaissance : on combine, on melange les 
 races de caracteres ; on coupe, on divise, on subdivise, on res- 
 serre les textes ou bien on les aere, et ce n'est qu'apres un labeur 
 parfois incroyable qu'on obtient le titre reve, serieux, qui fait 
 plaisir a voir et engage le lecteur a pousser plus loin dans les 
 colonnes serrees du volume. 
 
 Le livre est a peine compose, lu en premiere, en seconds, relu 
 en bon a tirer et revise en tierce, qu'il faut surveiller le tirage, la 
 mise en train et le bon decoupage des vignettes, porter son atten- 
 tion a un encrage suivi, a un foulage modere ; puis le brocheur 
 enleve, le glaceur satine, les feuilles sechent quelques jours, et, 
 enfm, sous le couteau a papier des habiles brocheuses, le volume 
 prend corps, est vetu de sa couverture ; le livre vient au jour, il 
 parait. 
 
 OCTAVE UZANNE. 
 
Z250 
 
 PS? 
 
 IS*?/