oughts sleep if I sit
still; my Fancy does not go by itself, as when my Legs
move it: and all those who study without a Book are in
the same Condition.

The figure of my Study is round, and has no more flat
Wall than what is taken up by my Table, and my Chairs;
so that the remaining parts of the Circle present me a
view of all my books at once, set up upon five degrees
of Shelves round about me. It has three noble and free
Prospects, and is sixteen paces[546] Diameter. I am not
so continually there in Winter; for my House is built
upon an Eminence, as its Name imports, and no part of it
is so much expos'd to the Wind and Weather as that,
which pleases me the better, for being of a painful
access, and a little remote, as well upon the account of
Exercise, as being also there more retir'd from the
Crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my Kingdom, as we say,
and there I endeavour to make myself an absolute
Monarch, and so sequester this one Corner from all
Society both Conjugal, Filial, and Civil[547].

The notices of libraries which I have collected have brought me to the end
of the sixteenth century, by which time most of the appliances in use in
the Middle Ages had been given up. I hope that I have not exhausted the
patience of my readers by presenting too long a series of illustrations
extracted from manuscripts. I love, as I look at them, to picture to
myself the medieval man of letters, laboriously penning voluminous
treatises in the writing room of a monastery, or in his own study, with
his scanty collection of books within his reach, on shelves, or in a
chest, or lying on a table. We sometimes call the ages dark in which he
lived, but the mechanical ingenuity displayed in the devices by which his
studies were assisted might put to shame the cabinet-makers of our own
day.

As the fashion of collecting books, and of having them bound at a lavish
expense, increased, it was obvious that they must be laid out so as to be
seen and consulted without the danger of spoiling their costly covers.
Hence the development of the lectern-system in private houses, and the
arrangement of a room such as the Duchess Margaret possessed at Malines.
Gradually, however, as books multiplied, and came into the possession of
persons who could not afford costly bindings, lecterns were abandoned, and
books were ranged on shelves against the wall, as in the public librari