This passion for the acquisition and enjoyment of _books_ has been the occasion of their lovers embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments: a rage which ostentation may have abused; but when these volumes belong to the real man of letters, the most fanciful bindings are often the emblems of his taste and feelings. The great Thuanus was eager to procure the finest copies for his library, and his volumes are still eagerly purchased, bearing his autograph on the last page. A celebrated amateur was Grollier, whose library was opulent in these luxuries; the Muses themselves could not more ingeniously have ornamented their favourite works. I have seen several in the libraries of our own curious collectors. He embellished their outside with taste and ingenuity. They are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness, the compartments on the binding are drawn, and painted, with different inventions of subjects, analogous to the works themselves; and they are further adorned by that amiable inscription, _Jo. Grollierii et amicorum_!--purporting that these literary treasures were collected for himself and for his friends.--I. D'ISRAELI. _Curiosities of Literature: Libraries._ A MALADY OF WEAK MINDS The Bibliomania, or the collecting an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity, has, since libraries have existed, infected weak minds, who imagine that they themselves acquire knowledge when they keep it on their shelves. Their motley libraries have been called the _madhouses of the human mind_; and again, the _tomb of books_, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library--and as it was facetiously observed, these collections are not without a _Lock on the Human Understanding_.--I. D'ISRAELI. _Curiosities of Literature: The Bibliomania._ AN UNWORTHY PROFESSOR 'I will frankly confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant bibliomaniac--that I love books dearly--that the very sight, touch, and mere perusal----' 'Hold, my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon; 'you have renounced your profession--you talk of _reading_ books--do bibliomaniacs ever _read_ books?'--T. F. DIBDIN. _Bibliomania._ A BIBLIOMANIAC