A remarkable style, known as “à la Fanfare,” became common in France about the end of the sixteenth century. They are generally attributed to Clovis Eve, who was Relieur du Roy (1596), but there is really no authority for such attribution. The style is a beautiful one, and consists of interlaced fillets enclosing graceful sprays of laurel or palm, and arabesque curves. Some of the finest examples were bound for J. A. de Thou, the historian, and bear his arms, a chevron between three gadflies, as a centre ornament. Most of De Thou’s books are bound in morocco, and among those which were made during the life of his second wife Gasparde de la Chastre are some that are curiously ornamented. They are bound in pale yellow morocco which has been stamped all over with impressions in black outline, probably from a wood block, in floral or conventional designs. The designs have afterwards been filled in by hand with colour stains, green, red and blue. The leather has been cut for the binding without any notice being taken of the coloured designs, which consequently appear irregularly on the finished work. The books are finished with gold lines and the arms of De Thou and La Chastre side by side. It has been said that De Thou chose certain colours for certain subjects, for the bindings of his books, but although it may be so in some cases I do not think it is consistently carried out. Certain colours have no doubt been chosen in some cases as distinctive of ownership, as for instance in the libraries of the three daughters of Louis XV., all of whom bore the same coat-of-arms. The books belonging to Madame Victoire were bound in olive, those of Madame Adelaide in red, and those of Madame Sophie in citron. French bindings in morocco were sometimes stained with colour, especially about the time of Henri II., but colour on morocco is more generally added as a pigment. In recent times some very decorative Spanish moroccos have been curiously stained with a sort of marbling. Large consignments of these coloured moroccos have been imported into this country, and they have been used especially by Mr. Roger De Coverly, one of our foremost bookbinders. The morocco is not of a very good quality, and it is too early to say whether the stains are harmful to the leather, as they probably would be if they were on calf. Colour as indicating subject is usually given in the case of large libraries that do their own binding. Red commonly indicates history and art; blue, theology; green, agriculture and botany; and so on. In the early seventeenth century the mysterious “Le Gascon” invented the “pointillé” or dotted style of gold tooling, which has been more universally copied than any other small peculiarity in book finishing. [Illustration: French Seventeenth Century Binding. Inlaid and Gold Tooled. By Le Gascon. [_To face p._ 238.]