There has grown up, too, quite a literature about the making of the book beautiful--whereof the Ex-Libris Series alone is witness. We have, besides, the history of Early Printed Books by Mr. Gordon Duff, of Early Illustrated Books by Mr. Pollard. The Book-plate has been looked after by Mr. Egerton Castle, and by a host of eager collectors ever since. Mr. Pennell is well known as the tutelary genius who takes charge of illustrators, and discourses upon them at large, and Mr. Strange bids us, none too soon, to become acquainted with our alphabets. I have not yet heard of any specialist taking up his parable upon "end papers," but, altogether, the book has never perhaps had so much writing outside of it, as it were, before. [Sidenote: MODERN TYPOGRAPHY.] A brilliant band of illustrators and ornamentists have appeared, too, and nearly every month or so we hear of a new genius in black and white, who is to eclipse all others. For all that, even in the dark ages, between the mid-nineteenth century and the early eighties, one or two printers or publishers of taste have from time to time attempted to restrain the wild excesses of the trade-printer, with his terribly monotonous novelties in founts of type, alternately shouting or whispering, anon in the crushing and aggressive heaviness of block capitals, and now in the attenuated droop of italics. Sad havoc has been played with the decorative dignity of the page, indeed, as well as with the form and breed of roman and gothic letters: one might have imagined that some mischievous printer's devil had thrown the apple of discord among the letters of the alphabet, so ingeniously ugly were so many modern so-called "fancy" types. We have had good work from the Edinburgh houses, from Messrs. R. and R. Clark, and Messrs. Constable, and in London from the Chiswick Press, for instance, ever since the old days of its connection with the tasteful and well printed volumes from the house of Pickering. Various artists, too, in association with their book designs, from D. G. Rossetti onwards, have designed their own lettering to be in decorative harmony with their designs. The Century Guild, with its "Hobby Horse" and its artists, like Mr. Horne and Mr. Selwyn Image, did much to keep alive true taste in printing and book decoration, when they were but little understood.[7] There have been printers, too, such as Mr. Daniel at Oxford, and De Vinne at New York, who have from different points of view brought care and selection to the choice of type and the printing of books, and have adapted or designed type. [7] And they elicited a response from across the water in the shape of "The Knight Errant," the work of a band of young enthusiasts at Boston, Mass., of which Mr. Lee and Mr. Goodhue may be named as leading spirits--the latter being the designer of the cover of "The Knight Errant," and the former the printer. [Illustration: SELWYN IMAGE.