BOoKBIEDING.
A set of specimens of bookbinding by Mr. Riviera, of No. 28 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's. Inn Fields, has been open to inspection by in- vitation this week previously to being despatched to their destination— the Universal Exhibition at Paris. There may be art, and even whole schools of Art, in the binding of books, as well as in the painting of pic- tures or the carving of marbles. Mr. Itiviere's examples are mostly of the solid sumptuous kind—dependent for their character more upon ex- cellent workmanship and fine material treated in reserved taste than upon conspicuous effect or multiplicity of detail. Earlier and later MediRval, _Elizabethan, French, Italian, and other styles, are exemplified in highly- wrought development : the " tree-marbling"—done to represent the graining of oak or sycamore, but with an effect which also conveys some notion of a volcano in eruption hurling up its fragments of rock and spreading abroad its hurtling fires, is a specialite of which we understand Mr. Riviere shares the practice with but one other member of the trade. The selection will do us credit across the ChanneL
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