to its existence and those that merely embellish it or protect it. The book therefore, like the man, is made up of soul, body and clothes. Which of these is the entity that may be loved? Now there are many kinds of lovers and many kinds of love. The belle of the ball may be surrounded with admirers, but if clad in rags and seated in a gutter she might excite no favorable notice. Still more may a pretty face be loved when it has no mental or spiritual qualities behind it. Yet these types of affection are inferior--no one would deny it. In like manner those who love the book merely for its fine clothes, who rejoice in luxurious binding and artistic illumination, and even those who dwell chiefly on its fine paper and careful typography, are but inferior lovers of books. The one loves his book for its clothes, and the other for its bodily perfection; neither cares primarily for its contents, its soul. Now the true lover is he who loves the soul--who sees beyond clothes and bodily attributes, and cherishes nobility of character, strength of intellect, loftiness of purpose, sweetness of disposition, steadfastness of attachment--those thousand qualities that go to make up personality. All these the book has, like the man or the woman--for is it not the essence of its writer? Your true book-lover would rather have a little old dog’s-eared copy of his favorite author, soiled and torn by use, with binding gone, and printed on bad paper with poorer type and worse ink, than a mediocre production that is a typographic and artistic masterpiece. And yet we call the collector of fine bindings and rare editions a “book-lover,” to the exclusion of the one who loves truly and devotedly. The true book-lover wants to get at the soul of his book; the false one may never see it. He may even refrain from cutting the leaves of the rare first edition that he has just bought, in doing which he is like the ignorant mother who sews her child up in his clothes for the winter--nay, worse; for you cannot sew up the child’s soul. Now let there be no misunderstanding. As the true lover would have his mistress beautiful--nay, as she _is_ beautiful to his eyes, whatever she may be to others, and as he would, if he could, clothe her in silks and adorn her with gems, so the true book-lover need not be and is not adverse to having his favorite author sumptuously set forth; he would rather than not see his books properly and strongly printed and bound; his love for the soul need not interfere with proper regard for the body and its raiment. And here is where the love of the book has an advantage over the affection whose object is a person. In spite of the advertisements of the beauty doctors, a homely face can rarely be made beautiful; but the book may be embodied and clothed as we will; it is the same, however printed and bound, to him who loves it for its contents.