17 



1895.] -^ ♦ [Rosengarten. 



types, lithographic and photographic and other processes, with the books 

 and illustrations showing their practical uses and application. It was 

 such a collection as only the enthusiasm of Frenchmen could bring 

 together, and yet it lost much of its value and interest for want of a cata- 

 logue, for the Exposition must end, the wonderful collections be returned 

 to their owners, and the opportunity of studying the history of printing 

 and book-making in its best sense will be lost. It is almost impossible to 

 hope that such an exhibition can soon, if ever, be organized here. The 

 French have a wonderful talent for organization, and the great collectors 

 seem to have united in this Exposition, giving the loan of their treasures 

 for a long period, arranging them with admirable skill, and sharpening 

 the zeal and enthusiasm for collecting which is useful only when it serves 

 to make the world wiser, by enabling it to take stock of the work of past 

 years, to trace the rise and growth and changes of an art, and none better 

 deserves such painstaking study and research than printing with its kindred 

 and allied industries, and the Paris Exposition du Livre was certainly 

 honorable to French collectors, to printers and binders and artists, all 

 joining to show how much the world owes to France for the past and for 

 the present of the art of printing, revealed in this exhibition. 



There was a letter in the Nation of September 20 last, describing 

 the Paris "Exposition du Livre," critical and in the main uncomplimen- 

 tary. In looking back on my own visit to the Exposition, I recall the 

 very instructive and interesting things I saw there, and those of little 

 value have been forgotten. Still I owe to the Nation the information that 

 Paris has its " Ecole du Livre " — what it is or where it is the writer does 

 not mention, nor where we can find anything about it. The Nation does 

 speak in praise of the foreign exhibits, the publications of the University 

 Press of Cambridge, and says that a handful of illustrated papers and 

 magazines, represented the books of Great Britain, and a great array 

 of names of illustrators, booksellers, journalists and diplomats, headed 

 by the ambassador of the United States in Paris, the members of the 

 American section, but there was nothing from this country or from Italy, 

 Spain or Germanj\ There was a small but comprehensive exhibit from 

 Denmark, showing to advantage the great Scandinavian illustrators, 

 whose names are too seldom heard out of their own country, intelligent 

 interpreters in good wood engraving, and their work published in vol- 

 umes, to whose excellence printer, binder and papermaker have all con- 

 tributed. In Copenhagen, too, there is a "School of the Book," appa- 

 rently on much the same lines as the institution of that name in Paris. 

 The Nation praises, in a half-patronizing way, the retrospective and 

 documentary part of the Exposition, the wealth of the private collections, 

 especially of bookbindings, but in the main condemns the exhibition as 

 a whole. That it deserves more than this is, I think, clear from the ab- 

 stract you have heard of the articles describing it in the Bulletin du 

 Bibliophile, the venerable organ of French book lovers, for it was founded 

 in 1834. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIV. 147. C. PRINTED JIAHCH 19, 1895. 



