The mention of these names leads one naturally to speak generally of book-plates engraved about the time of the French Revolution,--a period which is immortalised in a singular manner on French book-plates. M. Poulet Malassis remarks that many a noble library owner took good care to alter his book-plate in those troublesome times, and to replace the coronet which had surmounted the family escutcheon by the Phrygian cap of liberty. For instance, the Viscount de Borbon-Busset in 1793 changed his Armorial book-plate to a simple inscription--in which he calls himself 'Citoyen François'--surrounded by a leafy garland. The same fashion is exemplified even in clerical examples. Father le Mercier in his first book-plate displays the coronet which he either was, or at least considered himself to be, entitled to bear; but between 1789 and 1792 we find a second example of his book-plate, with a simple decorative finish to the top of the design in lieu of the coronet. At that time there was in France, as Mr. Walter Hamilton puts it, 'an awkward fashion of putting heads accustomed to coronets under the falling knife of the guillotine.' As far as the classifying of the leading styles in French book-plates goes, M. Poulet Malassis does not really help us much; and we cannot but hope that ere long some enterprising French collector will undertake the task. There is certainly, as M. Poulet Malassis observes, a resemblance--as the reader will see by turning back to the illustration of De Malherbe's book-plate--between the style of the first French book-plates and that of the first English; and it is noteworthy that the style disappeared in both countries much at the same time. Again, French book-plates of 1720-1730 bear distinct traces of what we have called 'Jacobean' work in speaking of English examples. The French _Rococo_ book-plate is really analogous to our 'Chippendale.' There is, however, a greater variety both of subject and treatment in each French style than one finds in England.