182 Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sandereon [Feb. 2, 



in the too great exactitude of his accomplished execution. Wholly 

 to achieve victory, indeed, in the binder's craft, to forget no end in 

 the prosecution of the means, to exaggerate no feature from long 

 practice and perfect skill, to permit no craft of hand to overcome tho 

 judgment of the head, is, in bookbinding, as in all crafts, an 

 exceedingly difficult task, and we have in the very development of a 

 craft the cause of its ultimate decay. But what an education the 

 prosecution of a craft is for the soul of a man ! The silent matter, 

 which is the craftsman's material, is wholly in his hands, it hears and 

 makes no reproaches!, but it never forgives and it has no mercy. 

 Sunrise after sunrise lights the craftsman to his task, sunset after 

 sunset leaves him to his regret. Shall the sun ever rise upon 

 victory or set upon contentment? It is a great struggle. He only 

 knows how great the struggle is, who knows what the aim of craft 

 rising into the ideal is, and who tolerates, between him and it, do 

 cloud of self-illusion, no splendour of popular praise to blind or to 

 darken his gaze. And so through the work of his hand man may 

 rise indeed to his soul's height. But the victory itself is withdrawn 

 behind the veil. The world may not know it when it is achieved, 

 and the artist himself may sometimes see it achieved, as he thinks, 

 when to reach it he has yet to traverse the entire way of truth. 



" Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, 

 The city — sparkles still, a grain of salt." 



The great schools of design for the decoration of bound books 

 are the great schools of France of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries. 



1. The first great school — the school of Grolier as it may be 

 called — is characterised mainly by the simple motives of straightness 

 and curvature. Straight and curved bands or straps, and straight 

 or curved lines are interwoven one with the other and distributed on 

 a more or less simple or intricate, but always symmetrical plan over 

 the sides and back and sometimes the edges of a book/ 



2. The second great school — the school of the Eves — is 

 characterised by the symmetrical distribution over the side of the 

 cover of symmetrically drawn compartments or panels, and the union 

 of them all into one organic whole by the intermediation of twisted 

 or interwoven bands. This is its main and for its earlier years 

 almost its only characteristic. But the school attained its maturity 

 by the combination with it of an independent contemporary style, 

 which consisted in the use of a number of branches, spreading from 

 each corner of the cover towards the centre, the unity of the whole 

 being enhanced by a semis, simple or alternate, of some simple tools 

 over the whole of the side. The combination was effected under the 

 direction, if not by the hands, of the great binders Nicholas and 

 Clovis Eve, and consisted in the enrichment of the interspaces of the 

 first style by means of the sprays and branches of the second. When 

 mature the school was characterised by compartments symmetrically 



