The Book of the Dead (Colored Plate).
[First English Printing (Fac-simile).]
[Assyrian Clay Tablet (Fac-simile).]
[John Adams (Portrait).]
[John Quincy Adams (Portrait).]
[Joseph Addison (Portrait).]
[Louis Agassiz (Portrait).]
["Poetry" (Photogravure).]
[Vittorio Alfieri (Portrait).]
["A Courtship" (Photogravure).]
["A Dutch Girl" (Photogravure).]

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

[Pierre Abélard.]
[Edmond About.]
[Abigail Adams.]
[Aeschines.]
[Aeschylus.]
[Aesop.]
[Grace Aguilar.]
[William Harrison Ainsworth.]
[Mark Akenside.]
[Alcaeus.]
[Louisa May Alcott.]
[Thomas Bailey Aldrich.]
[Jean le Rond D'Alembert.]
[Edmondo de Amicis.]

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
JOHN MILTON.

CAXTON.
Reduced facsimile of the first page of the only copy extant of
GODEFREY OF BOLOYNE
or
LAST SIEGE AND CONQUESTE OF JHERUSALEM.
The Prologue, at top of page, begins:
Here begynneth the boke Intituled Eracles, and also Godefrey of Boloyne,
the whiche speketh of the Conquest of the holy lande of Jherusalem.
Printed by Caxton, London, 1481. In the British Museum.
A good specimen page of the earliest English printing. Caxton's first
printed book, and the first book printed in English, was "The Game and
Play of the Chess," which was printed in 1474. The blank
space on this page was for the insertion by
hand of an illuminated initial T.

First English Printing (Fac-simile).