pedantic attempt has been made to specify certain Irish musical characteristics, the absence of which will prove one of the airs in dispute to be Scottish. But Sir Robert Stewart justly points out that the so-called unfailing characteristic of Irish, as of Chinese, melody to omit the fourth and seventh of the scale, is by no means a sure test. In many Irish airs these intervals are wanting, in others they both exist. In some they are omitted in the first strain and are present in the second part of the air. Again, the presence of the submediant or sixth of the scale, supposed to be a never-failing test of an Irish air, is equally emphatic in the Scottish air 'Auld Lang Syne,' and many other Scottish tunes.

The Scotch airs may be roughly classed as Highland tunes and Lowland tunes. The first class have a close affinity with the Irish music, and no wonder, for not only are the Highland Scotch of North Irish descent, but the Scotch of the West coast were for centuries closely connected with their kinsfolk across the North Channel, and a constant exchange of minstrelsy must have therefore gone on between them. The Lowland Scotch tunes form a large and distinct body of national melodies, composed by national musicians, and not found in Irish collections. In Ireland there is a much larger body of airs acknowledged on all hands to be purely Irish and not found in Scotch collections.

Outside these airs there is a large number common to and claimed by both countries. As Dr. Joyce pithily puts it, "In regard to a considerable proportion of them it is now impossible to determine whether they were originally Irish or Scotch. A few are claimed in Ireland that are certainly Scotch, but a very large number claimed by Scotland are really Irish, of which the well-known air 'Eileen Aroon' or 'Robin Adair' is an example. From the earliest times it was a common practice among the Irish harpers to travel in Scotland. How close was the musical connection between the two countries is hinted by the Four Masters when, in recording the death of Mac Carroll, they call him the chief minstrel of Ireland and Scotland! and there is abundant evidence to show that this connection was kept up till towards the end of the last century." Ireland was long the school for Scottish Harpers, as it was for those of Wales: "Till within the memory of persons still living, the school for Highland poetry and music was Ireland, and thither professional men were sent to be accomplished in these arts." Such facts as these sufficiently explain why so many Irish airs have become naturalised in Scotland.

"It is not correct to separate and contrast the music of Ireland and that of Scotland as if they belonged to two different races. They are in reality an emanation direct from the heart of one Celtic people; and they form a body of national melody superior to that of any other nation of the world."

[A. P. G.]

WEEKLY EVENING MEETING,

Friday February 2, 1894.

SIR FREDERICK BRAMWELL, Bart. D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S. Honorary Secretary and Vice-President, in the Chair.

T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON, Esq.

Bookbinding: its Processes and Ideal.

BOOKBINDING is in itself a comparatively simple matter and is easily described; but it is associated with great and interesting conditions of society, and at its highest rises into disinterested admiration by such means of expression as are within its reach of what is most beautiful and wonderful in human achievement, the written and printed speech of man. Binding, moreover, like every other handicraft, is on its ideal side a discipline and a type of life. I propose, therefore, to explain indeed how a book is bound, and how, when bound, it may be tooled. But I propose also throughout to set the craft into imaginative sympathy with the thought it would perpetuate; to touch upon its origin, its history and its patrons, to characterise the styles of the great periods of tooled decoration; to insist upon the need of some new departure in the invention and development of pattern; and finally, leaving the special objects of the binder's craft, to find in the intuition of the harmony of the universe an outline of the ideal of the craftsman and of the artist.

Speaking generally, binding has its origin in the desire to perpetuate thought. Before the discovery or invention of pliable portable material suitable for writing upon, "binding" was sought for and found in imperishable natural objects, stones, tablets, columns, ready to hand, upon which the thought was permanently incised. In this case the binding may be said to have preceded the writing. It was only when writing was made upon separate pieces or sheets of a pliable and perishable material, that binding proper was invented to hold the pieces or sheets together and to give strength to them, and protection and beauty.

But here again a distinction must be made. The pliable written sheet may be either rolled or folded, each giving rise to a form of binding peculiar to itself.

The rolled sheet is bound by fastening each sheet to the other sideways, and rolling the whole laterally from end to end, the last sheet serving as a cover to all the rest.

The folded sheet, on the other hand, is bound by simply sewing or

otherwise fastening the parts of the sheet to one another at the back crease or fold. And a number of folded sheets or of sections, as they are called, are bound by fastening each of them at the back to some common support, so that when all are sewn or otherwise fastened at the back, they may yet be free to open and shut at the front, or foreedge.

The invention of the folded sheet thus gave rise to the invention of modern binding, which in its essence is the union at the back of the folded sheets, which together constitute the folded book, or as I might say, despite the latent contradiction, the folded volume.

Throughout the long period which has elapsed since the invention of the folded sheet-it is said to have been invented in the third century before Christ-binding must have undergone many and important changes. But of these changes few records remain. Speaking generally of the binding of the middle and later ages, we may say that at each successive epoch the form of the binding adapted itself to the state of literature at the time. When books were few and large and stationary, the binding was correspondingly large and bossy and heavy; and when books became numerous and lighter and portable, the binding adapted itself to the new conditions, and, dropping the oak boards, the brass fittings, clasps, bosses and chains, became itself light and portable and beautiful. And thus wood, and silk, and velvet and leather, iron and brass, and silver and gold, and precious stones, were all used by the artificers of the middle and earlier ages, in the protection and embellishment of the world's written wealth. The invention of printing, however, and the multiplication of books, gave the victory to leather and to gold tooling, and with the invention of printing, binding passed into its modern phase, and became ultimately a craft apart, the craft of the bookbinder.

To the renown of bookbinding many countries and cities and patrons have contributed, as well as the artists and craftsmen whose work it has been. Singularly enough the names of very few bookbinders are known, but it is well known that to Grolier and to France is mainly due the gold tooling which is still the chief means of making the bound book beautiful. This tooling, of obscure origin, was practised first in Europe in Italy, but was soon after introduced into France by Grolier, and the French schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are still the great schools of design in that decorative method.

Deserving of mention or of allusion in this connection, even in the shortest account of bookbinding, are the innumerable crafts-crafts for the production of materials and crafts for the production of tools— upon which the binder's own craft depends. For this collaboration of crafts is a fact of capital importance and should always be borne in mind, that the solidarity of all industries may be understood and the dignity of each be appreciated.

It is to be regretted, however, that at this moment the craftsmen immediately concerned in making a book, the paper-maker, the

printer, and the binder, are not in possession of ideas bearing and operative upon the book as a whole, and controlling their several crafts to the one common end of the book beautiful, and the binder is in the unfortunate position of coming last, to inherit all, and be helpless under, the mistakes of his predecessors the paper maker, printer and publisher.

Modern binding may be divided into two main divisions : 1. Bindings for use.

2. Bindings for beauty's sake.

I do not say that the divisions can be precisely defined or that the useful may not be beautiful, or that the beautiful may not be useful. I mean only that of a certain class the utility of the binding is the main characteristic, and that of a certain other class not the utility of the binding but the beauty of the decoration is the prominent and delightful feature. All bindings may be, and most bindings are, decorated in some form or other, but I would deprecate the decoration in gold of cloth or paper bindings: the material is too poor and the kind of binding is unsuitable for elaborate invention. Decoration should be reserved for cases in which a permanent pleasure is aimed at, and decoration in all its affluence exclusively for bindings of the best kind, and for books that are in themselves, apart from their apparel, beautiful and worthy of conspicuous honour.

The binding of a book, to come closer to our subject, is a series of processes too numerous to be entered upon in detail, in so short an account of bookbinding as the present, but the main operations are as follows:

1. The sheets are folded so that the headlines of each page shall, if possible, be at a uniform height throughout the book.

2. The sections are then sewn to cords, set and held at equal distances from one another in a frame, and at right angles to the sections.

3. The ends of the cords are frayed out and laced into and fastened to rectangular pieces of millboard (called boards), cut to the size of the sides of the book, which they protect.

4. The boards and back are then covered with leather or other suitable material, and the last and first sheets of the book (added to the book proper for the purpose) are pasted down upon the inside of the boards.

The book so treated is completely "forwarded," as it is called, and ready to pass into the hands of the "finisher" to be tooled or decorated, or "finished." The decoration in gold on the surface of a bound book is wrought out bit by bit by means of small engraved brass stamps called "tools." The steps of the process are shortly as follows:

1. The pattern is first worked out with the tools blackened in the smoke of a candle or lamp, upon a piece of paper cut to the exact size of the portion of the book to be decorated.

2. The piece of paper with the pattern upon it is then applied

to the surface to be decorated, and the pattern is reimpressed on the paper, and so through on to the surface of the book.

3. The paper is now removed, and the pattern on the book is reimpressed with hot tools to make the impression crisp and distinct.

4. At this stage a different process begins. The surface of the cover, with the pattern impressed upon it as described, is taken bit by bit and treated as follows:

1. First it is moistened with water or vinegar.

2. Then the pattern is pencilled over with "glaire," which is a liquid composed of the white of an egg beaten up and drained off.

3. Then, when the glaire is dry, the surface is lightly touched with oil or grease to give a hold to the gold leaf next to be applied.

4. Then the gold leaf, cut to the size and shape of the portion of the cover to be operated on, is applied by a flat brush called a "tip," and pressed down by a pad of cotton-wool to reveal the pattern underneath.

5. Then, and finally, the pattern with the gold upon it is gone over again with the hot tools, and the gold is impressed into it. The rest of the gold is rubbed away with an oiled rag, and the pattern is now displayed permanently in gold and "finished."

The description is easy-how easy!-but the craft is difficult. Gold cannot be persuaded to stick as a friend may be persuaded to stay; it must be made to stick, i.e. all the conditions upon which successful gold tooling depends must in all cases be observed, and there is the rub! What in each case-and the circumstances are never quite the same-are the conditions? How divine them? A little more, or a little less, makes so much difference. How dry may the leather be, or how damp must it be? How much glaire? How hot must the tools be? When is the moment to begin? Then how difficult it is correctly to manipulate the tools, to keep them even upon the leather. How difficult, finally, to keep the leather, throughout all the long and difficult operation, perfectly clean and the gold brilliant! What patience, what natural aptitude, what acquired skill, what fortitude! "The city sparkles like a grain of salt." Shall I ever succeed? the apprentice may well ask himself. Shall I ever attain to such skill, to such consciousness of power, that I shall not even know how to fail? In this difficulty, too, and in the effort and ambition to overcome it, lies a further difficulty, the snare of the art, the temptation of the finisher. He becomes engrossed in it-the finisher in mere finishing. He pursues it positively, and not in subordination to design. And he achieves victory at last, only to find that what he should have achieved, the thing beautiful, has escaped him. He can tool, but he cannot design; and he has so magnified execution that when completely successful, when completely triumphant, he is then most conspicuously a failure. The tremulous outline of design-and design appeals to the imagination, to the inner eye of the soul as well as to the outer eye of sense-the tremulous outline of design has perished