Dressing a Book.

Mr. Taylor, who has been abroad studying Continental and American bookbinding and printing, then gave us a short history of printing. He showed up an original copy of Plutarch's Lines, and an enormous "Pocket Bible" printed in 1493. So good was the vellum used to bind the book and of such high quality the paper, that these books were still as good as the day they came from the press. He compared them with the New Zealand papers fifty years ago, which were now in a state of decomposition. This high standard of production was not, however, maintained, until we come to the work of Morris and Burne-Jones, in England. We were shown a hand-printed copy of Morte d'Arthur, various types of printing from French firms; an interesting Blake facsimile: two precious volumes of the first edition of words-worth's "lyrical Ballads." these old styles of printing and binding were then compared with recent work from the Lone Such press and the American "Colophon."