In finishing books, the operator should exercise his best discrimination with regard to the selection of tools, so that they shall be appropriate to the subject of which the book treats. In order to succeed in this, the finisher in all cases needs to be a man of wide reading and good knowledge.

It is an excellent plan for the finisher, ambitious of attaining excellence in his art, to devote some time to the study of the different styles of various countries and historical epochs. Beginning with the Egyptian form of ornament, and casually glancing at those prevailing at Nineveh and Babylon, as exemplified by the disinterred remains, he will next consider the ornamentation of Greece and Rome, and, on the fall of the latter empire, the modification of decoration which grew out of Roman art, as the Byzantine, Mauresque, or Saracenesque, and the early Gothic. Later Gothic will lead on to Renaissance, and, gradually, to modern art. Abundant materials exist in modern literature to aid the inquirer; while in our museums can be found actual remains of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman art, and our ancient churches will give plenty of Gothic examples. A careful tour through the "courts" of the Crystal Palace is, in itself, a fair education in styles of ornament.

In finishing books to which the different classes of ornament are applicable, care should be taken not to mix the styles. When a certain class of ornament is decided upon, it should be carried consistently through.
With regard to the ornamentation of modern books, some few general rules may be given, as suggesting hints to guide the taste. Works upon religious topics would seem to require a sobriety of embellishment, as being more in harmony with their character than ornament of a lighter kind. The decorations should not only be few and simple, but executed in blind tooling-that is to say, without any gold; or if gold be employed at all, it should be confined to the edges of the cover or panels, while the whole of the centre is left blind.

History and biography, if we adopt this principle, may be less gravely embellished than religious works, but still should have weight and solidity of decoration, as far as the phrase can be applied with propriety to anything in the way of ornament.

Poetry and fiction in general would be most characteristically dressed in a light, elegant, and graceful binding, except, indeed, as regards tragedy, which should be clothed in what our old dramatists would have called sad ornament. In short, the bindings should not only assimilate with the taste of the time the work treats of, but the color should also be in harmony with its subject.

It would at first sight seem somewhat inconsistent with the rules laid down, that we should embellish the binding of a modern author, and upon a modern subject, with Greek or Roman ornaments. But this is a necessity growing out of the very narrow limits of human invention, or, it may be, of the forms on which that invention had to work. Certain it is, that all the ingenuity of our artists, of every description, has not been able to add a single combination to those invented by the Greeks and Romans, and even they appear to be only modifications of the old Egyptian.

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