ntiment; and this I think explains the elaborate
precautions against theft; the equally elaborate care taken to arrange a
library in so orderly a fashion that each book might be accessible with
the least difficulty and the least delay; and the exuberant gratitude with
which the arrival of a new book was welcomed.

In my present work I have looked at libraries from the technical side
exclusively. It would have been useless to try to combine fire and water,
sentiment and fact. But let me remind my readers that we are not so far
removed from the medieval standpoint as some of us perhaps would wish.
When we enter the library of Queens' College, or the older part of the
University Library, at Cambridge, where there has been continuity from the
fifteenth century to the present day, are we not moved by feelings such as
I have tried to indicate, such in fact as moved John Leland when he saw
the library at Glastonbury for the first time?

Moreover, there is another sentiment closely allied to this by which
members of a College or a University are more deeply moved than others--I
mean the sentiment of association. The most prosaic among them cannot fail
to remember that the very floors were trodden by the feet of the great
scholars of the past; that Erasmus may have sat at that window on that
bench, and read the very book which we are ourselves about to borrow.

But in these collections the present is not forgotten; the authors of
to-day are taking their places beside the authors of the past, and are
being treated with the same care. On all sides we see progress: the
lecterns and the stalls are still in use and keep green the memory of old
fashions; while near them the plain shelving of the twentieth century
bears witness to the ever-present need for more space to hold the invading
hordes of books that represent the literature of to-day. On the one hand,
we see the past; on the other, the present; and both are animated by full,
vigorous life.

FOOTNOTES:

[521] MSS. Mus. Brit., MSS. Cotton, Claudius E. 4, part 1. fol. 124. I
have to thank my friend, Mr Hubert Hall, of the Public Record Office, for
drawing my attention to this illustration.

[522] _Gesta Abbatum_, ed. Rolls series, I. p. 184. I owe this reference
and its translation to the Reverend F. A. Gasquet, _Medieval Monastic
Libraries_, p. 89, in _Downside Review_, 1891, Vol. X. No. 2.

[523] Henri Havard, _Dict. de l' Ameublement_, s. v. Librairie. The first
chest