d as far as the
nature of the room would permit. Wherever a blank wall could be found, it
was lined with shelves, and the cases placed at right angles to the
side-walls were continued over the narrow spaces left between their ends
and the windows. One of these cases, from the south side of the room, is
here shewn (fig. 131). The shelves under the windows were added
subsequently. A similar arrangement was adopted for the east room in
1787-90.

At Clare College, at about the same date, the new library over the kitchen
was fitted up with shelves placed against the walls. These fittings are
excellent specimens, ornamented with fluted Ionic pilasters, an elaborate
cornice, and pediments above the doors. It is worth noting, as evidence of
the slowness with which new fashions are accepted, that the antiquary
William Cole, writing in 1742, calls this library "a very large
well-proportion'd Room a la moderne, w^th ye Books rang'd all round it &
not in Classes as in most of y^e rest of y^e Libraries in other
Colleges[513]."

[Illustration: Fig. 131. Bookcase in the north room of the University
Library, Cambridge, designed by James Essex, 1731-1734.]

The fashion of which I have been tracing the progress in England had been
accepted during the same period in France, where some beautiful specimens
of it may still be seen. I presume that the example was set by the wealthy
convents, most of which had been rebuilt, at least in part, in the then
fashionable classical style, during the seventeenth century[514]. At
Rheims a library fitted up by the Benedictines of Saint Remi in 1784 now
does duty as the chapel of the Hotel-Dieu. Fluted Corinthian columns
supporting an elaborate cornice divide the walls into compartments, in
which the books are ranged on open shelves. The room is 120 ft. long, by
31 ft. broad, with four windows on each side. With this may be compared
the public library at Alencon, the fittings of which are said to have been
brought from the abbey of the Val Dieu near Mortain at the Revolution. The
room is 70 ft. long by 25 ft. wide. Against the walls are 26 compartments
or presses, alternately open and closed. Each of these terminates in an
ogee arch enriched with scrolls and a central shield. The whole series is
surmounted by a cornice divided by console brackets, between which are
shields, probably intended originally to carry the names of the subjects
of the books.

[Illustration: Fig. 132. Interior of the Library