forefathers. Sir Roger de Coverley's, for instance, must have been somewhat meagre. Doubtless it contained the works of many a painful divine, with the dust of half a century reposing on them, save the few volumes in regular use with his chaplain. But then, what treasures of black-letter literature were probably thrust into some cupboard next spurs and corkscrews! The "Boke of St. Albans," and, perhaps, two or three Caxtons, with the First Folio of Shakespeare (1623), and, it might be, the first edition of "Comus" (1637), in a small quarto, with the now rare black-letter folio of Sir T. More's "Workes." Then the good knight would certainly have possessed Turberville's "Book of Falconrie," 1611, also in black-letter; and Jacques de Fouilloux on "Venerie," together with Cardan, Agrippa, and Paracelsus, which had descended to him from an ancestor who had once dabbled in mysticism and alchemy. Old-fashioned libraries of this kind were mostly dispersed at the beginning of this century, when the great book-collectors had somewhat apprised executors of their value. Another kind of library, not uncommon thirty years ago in many an old hall under its ancestral elms, consisted of a large collection of last-century romances which no one by any chance looked into in the present century, but which precluded the necessity of papering the room which held them. This so-called library was only used for smoking in and for holding guns and fishing-rods. Many an old country parson's library is still a curiosity of meagreness. It contains a few antiquated commentaries and several volumes of sermons, with a haphazard modern collection of agricultural, angling, shooting, or hunting books, according to the taste of its owner. The whole library may be worth a ten-pound note; but the room is useful to hold the parson's boots and fishing-tackle, and apples or onions may frequently be seen drying on the floor before the window. Few conditions of life are more deplorable than to be a scholar and a book-lover at a retired country parsonage not too richly endowed with glebe and tithes. There is probably no good county library within thirty miles of cross-roads; and even then impecuniosity prevents the parson from subscribing. The Cathedral library, it is true, is open to him, but it too may be half a county away, and opens its doors for a couple of hours, it may be, on the most awkward day of all the six for the country parson to visit it, while the regulations for the return of books are vexatious. Then, too, the books he most wishes for are sure to be conspicuously absent from its catalogue. Gradually he leaves it in disgust to the custodian and his moths and book-worms. Cambridge men are fortunately able to supply themselves with books from the University Library, which with commendable liberality

allows country members to borrow them and to keep them for a reasonable time. But the authorities of the Bodleian grant no such privilege to the non-resident M.A.s of the sister University. It was said, we know not with what reason, that the late librarian, Mr. Cox, was strenuously opposed to lending books to non-resident members; if so, a wise measure of reform in this point, coming from the new librarian, would be eagerly accepted by the expatriated scholars of the University, and would be more practically useful than that constant remodelling of examination statutes which seems to be the hobby of modern reformers. No one in his senses would wish blackletter rarities or copies of scarce books to be trusted to the tender mercies of railway porters and, worse still, country carriers; but a very large proportion of ordinary working books, particularly when duplicates are either already possessed or could readily be acquired, might well be utilised for transmission to members of the University sequestered in country rectories and the like. If abused, which is very unlikely, the privilege could easily be recalled. As it is, many faithful sons of Oxford are tempted to murmur at their Alma Mater for first imbuing them with a keen thirst for knowledge, and then hindering them from slaking it at the sacred spring of the Bodleian. Another misery of the country resident may be named, though it is clearly inseparable from the position of his parish his difficulty of obtaining scarce or valuable books is extreme, even when he is blessed with a sufficient number of sesterces to tempt the Columns. The catalogue or sale list arrives at breakfast-time, and the bibliophile marks two or three books which might form the gems of his little library if only they were secured. So he writes, or even telegraphs at once, only to receive too often in due time the disappointing answer, "books already sold." Those who are on the spot, in bookbuying as in everything else, possess an immeasurable advantage over the dweller in rural shades. It is true that he may find sermons in stones and books in the running brooks, and Wordsworth comforts him with the aphorism that "one impulse from the vernal wood" is worth a myriad of books. The eager seeker after Elzevirs or Aldines is not to be consoled in this guise. If he does enjoy the beauties of nature, he also knows full well what manifold disabilities he labours under compared with his town brother. Could Cracherode ever have brought together his glorious library, a gift worthy the nation's acceptance, had he not been free every morning to make the circuit of the booksellers' shops in Fleet Street? What likelihood would he have had of obtaining his Tyndall's New Testament on vellum, which had belonged to Anne Boleyn, or the Edinburgh

Terence, and a large-paper Cebes, which he carried in the two pockets of his coat in the last visit which he ever paid to Payne the bookseller's shop, had he resided on his estate in Hertfordshire— on which grew a remarkable chestnut tree, all only known to him by an etching-instead of in Queen's Square?

But the library of the middle-class, say of a well-to-do tradesman in a provincial town, is perhaps more deplorable than the average country parson's. On the top of a small chiffonier, in which his spirits and tobacco are kept, lie half a score of volumes and a few crumpled newspapers. Among the former, besides a cheap County Directory, are perhaps a shilling copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a ReadyReckoner, a couple of Dickens's novels, and an odd volume of South's Sermons. In any case, the intellectual fare is sufficiently meagre and unappetising. It may be replied that the owner of this collection of books belongs to a mechanics' institute, and in all probability obtains through it a varied choice of literature. At too many of these institutions we fear the newspaper table is more attractive than the shelves, to most readers; while, save in recent or rateestablished libraries, the shelves themselves contain literary fodder of a more or less musty character, sweepings from neighbouring squires' libraries, the popular books of ten years ago purchased at a large reduction from Mudie, and the like; and when there are standard books, these are too often in wretched editions. Descending a step lower, the library of the well-to-do daily labourer of the country possesses a marked individuality. A folio copy of an illustrated Bible, taken in parts, each embellished with a couple of engravings of a very portentous character, occupies, fitly enough, the place of honour under the corner cupboard of china. It has cost its possessor three times its value, each part having been purchased at full price and with ready money from the enterprising booksellers' agents who still perambulate country districts, and the book having then been expensively bound by the highest attainable talent at the neighbouring town with a solidity and absence of taste amazing to any one unacquainted with the Philistinism of country booksellers. Next it invariably comes a translation of Josephus in one volume, with vile engravings, and print which would necessitate an immediate visit to an oculist were any ordinary book-lover to read a page of it. Josephus has fallen upon evil days, and, being somewhat discredited by scholars, has curiously enough been chosen by the booksellers as the most valuable of authorities, to be reprinted in many forms and shapes, and be implicitly accepted by every cottager as a faithful commentator on and expounder of Biblical history. Thus he perhaps,

amongst all profane authors, comes nearest the ideal of Comtist felicity; being regarded by an enormous clientèle as the most valuable of the classics, and an inspired author only just, if at all, inferior to the writers of the Bible. Beside Josephus lies a pile of books in old brown calf bindings, more or less tattered. Inspection shows them to be an old spelling-book, a manual of family prayer, Old Moore's Almanac, a "Pious Parishioner," and perhaps a treatise on farriery with one of its covers torn off. It is useless for the most ardent book-collector to look for rarities on the tradesman's shelf of tawdry gilt cloth and magenta-coloured volumes. In the modest russet-clad handful of books belonging to the cottager, a curious book may sometimes be picked up, which has descended from father to son for some generations, or been obtained at the sale of a deceased clergyman's effects. Mr. Blades tells a story of this kind in his "Enemies of Books" how, in 1844, a wandering pedlar bought for waste-paper, at a penny a pound, no less a treasure than a copy of "The Boke of St. Albans." It had been turned out of the library at Thonock Hall along with rubbish, and, after some further vicissitudes, at length found its way to the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville.

Circumstances, if not fashion, have completely altered the idea of a library since the beginning of the century. Then it meant a well-chosen collection, more or less bulky and numerous, of standard literature, together with as many copies of rare books, especially black-letter volumes, as the purse of its owner could command. The library (or rather libraries) of Heber were of this character, and so, although much smaller in dimensions, was the excellent collection of Sir Walter Scott, which still furnishes one of the chief attractions of Abbotsford. This conception has gradually been modified; partly because black-letter tomes, and rarities of all kinds, have in these latter days become much rarer and more costly, owing to the more general diffusion of wealth and the excessive competition of American bibliophiles; partly because the necessity for such a complete list of standard authorities has vanished with the greater facilities for enjoying public libraries, and especially for working in the splendid reading-room of the national collection. Historic libraries, the pride of a county, such as those at Althorpe and Blenheim, together, in a lower degree, with smaller ancestral collections, are of course still kept up; but as a general rule, the book-lover contents himself with a small but perfect library in its way of p. 48.

1

2

2 Since these words were written, the dispersal of the Sunderland Collection has begun.

ordinary working books, histories, dictionaries, and the like; while for any book which is only occasionally required, he resorts to some institution or standard library. "In our modern times, as the industrious Bibliophile Jacob says, the fashion of book collecting has changed; from the vast hall that it was, the library of the amateur has shrunk to a closet-to a mere book-case. Nothing but a neat article of furniture is needed now, where a great gallery or a long suite of rooms was once required. The book has become, as it were, a jewel, and is kept in a kind of jewel-case." Pursuing this metaphor, the modern book-lover preserves his gems in an old oak chest, a quaint escritoire, in a few shelves, it may be, surrounded by the ordinary rank and file of a literary man's library. Mr. Lang recommends that these more precious and beautifully-bound treasures should be kept in a case with closely-fitting glass doors. The fashionable jeweller in "Lothair," who was so solicitous about the welfare of the countess's pearls, and used to rub them in the sunshine, and lay them to absorb it on a bank fronting south, could scarcely exceed this amateur's carefulness about these books of gem-like interest in their owner's eyes. "The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the book-cases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak, or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is fancied that book-worms dislike the aromatic scent of cedar, sandalwood, and Russia leather." But the scholar who not only prizes but also uses books must still be able to apply to himself Southey's lines:

My days among the dead are past;

Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old.

For such an one Mr. Lang has also sound advice ; "in the open oak cases for modern authors and for books with common modern papers and bindings, in the closed armoire for books of rarity and price, he will find, we think, the most useful mode of arranging his treasures." In short, until late years a library meant a large room for holding many books, now it is more frequently a small room with a shrine devoted to a few rare books. In this method the march of The Library, by A. Lang, 1881 (Macmillan), p. 32.