In vivid contrast to these lovely specimens of the binder's art, are found innumerable bibliopegic horrors, on the shelves of countless libraries, public and private. Among these are to be reckoned most law books, clad in that dead monotony of ugliness, which Charles Dickens has described as "that _under-done pie-crust_ cover, which is technically known as law calf." There are other uncouth and unwholesome specimens everywhere abroad, "whom Satan hath bound", to borrow Mr. Henry Stevens's witty application of a well-known Scripture text. Such repellant bindings are only fit to serve as models to be avoided by the librarian. The binding that is executed by machinery is sometimes called "commercial binding". It is also known as "edition binding", because the whole edition of a book is bound in uniform style of cover. While the modern figured cloth binding originated in England, it has had its fullest development in the United States. Here, those ingenious and powerful machines which execute every branch of the folding and forwarding of a book, and even the finishing of the covers, with almost lightning speed, were mostly invented and applied. Very vivid is the contrast between the quiet, humdrum air of the old-fashioned bindery hand-work, and the ceaseless clang and roar of the machinery which turns out thousands of volumes in a day. "Not as ours the books of old, Things that steam can stamp and fold." I believe that I failed to notice, among the varieties of material for book-bindings heretofore enumerated, some of the rarer and more singular styles. Thus, books have been bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear, crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity has been reached by binding books in human skin, of which many examples are on record. It is perhaps three centuries old, but the first considerable instance of its use grew out of the horrors of the French Revolution. In England, the Bristol law library has several volumes bound in the skin of local criminals, flayed after execution, and specially tanned for the purpose. It is described as rather darker than vellum. A Russian poet is said to have bound his sonnets in human leather--his own skin--taken from a broken thigh--and the book he presented to the lady of his affections! Such ghoulish incidents as these afford curious though repulsive glimpses of the endless vagaries of human nature.