BERTHAUD. (Claude Louis, known as the abbot). The children's quadrille. Or new system of reading; by Berthaud. Fifteenth edition, revised and improved for the use of children; increased with Tales and Historiettes, by Mesdames de Genlis, Dufresnoy, de Beaufort, d'Hautpoul, de Montolieu and Hannah More; decorated with figures and vignettes and accompanied by a box containing 84 cards. Arthus Bertrand, Libraire-éditeur, rue Hautefeuille, 21, Paris. [Circa 1830]. In-8 (24,2 x 16 cm). False title, frontispiece, title, 180 pp. 5 plates: green half cloth, green marbled paper boards, gilt title on the spine decorated with cold filets. (Later binding). [Is attached]. A romantic box. [France. ca. 1830]. (9.2 x 15.2 x 3.7 cm). Lithographed title in black on the yellow paper cover: Le Quadrille des Enfants ou Système Nouveau de Lecture by Berthaud, with a gilt and embossed frame, yellow paper edges stamped with floral motifs. It contains, in four compartments, 84 bone cards, 20 are left white, 24 are dyed in green, 20 in red and 20 in yellow, they have two labels applied on each side. "A method [that] speaks to the eyes and ears" Imagined in 1744 by Claude Louis Berthaud, abbot and boarding school master in Paris. The address of the bookseller-publisher Arthus Bertrand (1770-1834) allows to date this fifteenth edition. Arthus Bertrand succeeded to the collection of François Buisson in 1806 and to that of the Widow Nicolas Desaint shortly before 1807, he was patented bookseller in 1812. His son Jean-Baptiste succeeded him in 1834, the rue Hautefeuille was the last address of the father. The aim of the Quadrille is to bring to the knowledge of all the sounds of the French language. The cards of different colors (plates of twenty or twenty-four illustrations) correspond to the first four engraved and hand-colored plates of the method. These four plates of colored engravings are of remarkable finesse. On the small bone plates of the box one will find on one side the figure, engraving most often colored by hand, and on the other the sound which relates to it. They become in the hands of the pupils "instructive toys". A frontispiece and an engraving, by Wilmann, beginning the tales and stories in large characters, complete the engraved illustration. Berthaud's manual is accompanied by its rare romantic box, contemporary with the work, and complete with all the bone cards with the engravings, also colored, applied. Extremely rare set. The bright bone card box makes the later binding of the book a bit dull, but the book, with its colored plates, is perfectly preserved.