None of these are particularly early, indeed the majority must be dated after the establishment of independence, but they are well worthy of study. Allegory runs wild in the book-plates--there are three mentioned by Mr. Dexter Allen--of the first-named Society, and Minerva is prominent in all. Let me endeavour to describe two, both the work of Maverick. In one she hands a volume of the Society's Library to an Indian, whose attitude in receiving it suggests that he had never seen a book before; in which case its contents cannot have done him much good. In the other she has just descended from Olympus, entered the library, and seized a volume from the book-shelf, which she presents to an apparently more appreciative red-skin. I say appreciative, for in return he hands the goddess his tomahawk. Minerva with a tomahawk! Can anything be more delightfully absurd? One might go on with many pages of these descriptions, but enough has been said to show the burlesque spirit in which allegory is treated, doubtless quite unintentionally, on American Society book-plates. In that fact lies much of their interest. More happy in conception and execution is the homelier design appearing on the book-plate of the Village Library in Farmington, which, if not a beautiful piece of engraving, is at least free from grotesqueness. 'In this,' says Mr. Allen, 'we see the interior of a room in which a young lady patron of the library is storing her mind with those choice axioms which, if put in practice, far exceed the attractiveness of mere personal beauty; so says the couplet beneath the picture:-- 'Beauties in vain, their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sense, but merit wins the soul. A writer in the _Ex Libris Journal_ points out that, after the Revolution, till about the year 1810, there were scarcely any American armorial book-plates. Perhaps one of the earliest is that of 'Samuel Elam, Rhode Island,' which appears to have been engraved about 1800. It is 'Pictorial' in style, and shows a shield, bearing arms, resting against a tree-stump, with a landscape background. The majority of American book-plate possessors, from 1810 until the fashion of using a book-plate became common some little time back, seem to have been members of the legal profession. During the last few years many American book-plates have been as wild and meaningless in design as the majority of those recently produced in England; although, as Mr. Allen's illustrations show us, a few truly artistic and appropriate examples have appeared. One modern book-plate from across the Atlantic is sure to attract English eyes; for the owner's works are read as eagerly, and appreciated as fully, here as in the States,--I mean that of 'Oliver Wendell Holmes.' This, too, is appropriate for the man, consisting simply of a motto-scroll, on which is written _Per Ampliora ad Altiora_, and a nautilus--'the ship of pearl,' as he calls it; 'the venturous bark that flings