The French degenerated in binding from the time of Louis XIV. until they became far inferior to the English. This continued to the beginning of the present century; the books bound for the Emperor Napoleon, upon which no expense appears to have been spared, are clumsy, disjointed, and the tools coarse and unevenly worked. They were generally bound in red morocco, with morocco joints, lined with purple silk, upon which the imperial bee was stamped repeatedly. Thouvenin enjoys the honour of rescuing the art from its long-continued degradation in France, and of founding a school whose disciples are now acknowledged to rank with the great masters of the art. His tools and patterns were designed and cut by artists in his employ; his establishment was on a large scale; but at his death he left nothing behind him but his reputation as an artist, to stimulate others to attain excellence in workmanship and a cultivated taste in ornament and design. Among the most celebrated binders of the present day in France are, Trautz et Bauzonnet, Niédré, Duru, Capé and Lortic. The books of these artists are distinguished for solidity, squareness, freedom of the joints, firmness of the heads and back, and extreme nicety of finish. The fore-edges are gilt with the round in them, giving them a solid rich appearance, as yet unequalled. The material employed is of the choicest kind,—soft, rich Levant morocco being the favourite covering for choice books. This leather, in the hands of an ordinary workman, would make a clumsy covering upon account of its great thickness; for it cannot be shaved down by a skin-dresser without destroying the natural grain of the leather, and, with it, its velvet-like richness and beauty; and yet, under the manipulations of these French artists, it becomes one of the most plastic of materials; rare volumes of the smallest dimensions, containing but one or two sheets, are not only covered on the exterior, but the interior of the boards, and even the joints are of Levant morocco. There are many specimens of binding executed in France for gentlemen of taste and lovers of the art in this country; and, in speaking of the productions of French artists, it is to these that we refer. As a binder, Lortic appears to be the least known; but he will probably become more so. Capé is rapidly growing into favour. Duru is celebrated for the excellence of his forwarding. In this respect he cannot be surpassed. The full morocco specimens that we have seen have generally been bound à la Janseniste, and were truly exemplars. In exterior gilding he is not so happy as some of his brethren. Niédré possesses fine taste; his styles of finishing are varied and graceful in design, and the execution admirable. The reputation of Trautz et Bauzonnet has been established principally by the senior partner, Bauzonnet, Trautz being his son-in-law, and whose name has recently been placed at the head of the firm, perhaps to anticipate others in claiming to be the inheritors of the skill, and pupils of his father-in-law's school. Bauzonnet's bindings combine excellence in every department. They are specimens of the art in its highest state, being solid, firm, and square in every portion of the forwarding department. The covering, joints, and inside linings are matchless. The finishing may safely be pronounced perfection, so far as any thing produced by human agency can be. In style of finishing he generally confines himself to modifications of the Grolier, or to a broad border, composed of fine tools; and in the tooling the execution is faultless. Those who are accustomed to English bindings are apt to find fault with the firmness of his backs, as they do not throw out like English loose backs; but this subject of loose backs is but little understood; for, when it is known that what is generally esteemed an excellence is often but an indication of weakness,—that, in order to make the book throw out and lie open flat, the substance by which the sheets are secured together is a single strip of paper,—and that, where the band upon which the book is sewn can be plainly seen upon the opening of the volume, there is a strain upon it, the result of which must be its breakage, if in constant use, (a catastrophe that will never happen to one of Bauzonnet's books,)—the firm back will be preferred. In tracing the progress of the Art, and upon comparing the merits of artists of ancient and modern times, it is to the moderns that we assign the palm of superiority, especially for perfection of detail in the ornamentation.

[*] "The antiquity of illuminated missals has been traced, conjecturally, even to the time of the apostles themselves. At the beginning of the Christian era, missive letters were usually written on tablets of wood, hollowed so as to present something of the appearance of a boy's slate in a frame. Two of these were placed face to face to preserve the writing, which was on wax, and a pair of boards thus prepared was called a Dyptich. The Epistles of St. Paul and the other apostles to the primitive churches were, in fact, missive letters despatched to their distant congregations; and there is every probability that imaginary or real portraits of the writers accompanied the letters, and headed the contents of the Christian dyptichs, in order to insure to them the same degree of reverence which was paid to the missives of the government when headed by the imperial effigies.

"The compact form of the dyptich suited the purposes of a movable altar-piece admirably. And the names dyptic or triptic, which implied at first but a double or triple page, came with time to designate those folding altarpieces so frequently found in the earliest Christian churches."—Lady Calcott's Essay.

[†] Leland's Itin. vol. ii. p. 86, Oxford, 1769.]


MANUAL
OF THE
ART OF BOOKBINDING.

PART I.

SHEET WORK.

As the gathering of the sheets of a book, after they have been printed and dried off, is nearly always performed at the printer's, it will not be necessary to enter into any details on that subject, but to consider, as the commencement of binding, the operation of