hion again.

_II.--In My Library_

Intercourse with books comforts me in age and solaces me in
solitariness, eases me of weariness and rids me of tedious company. To
divert importunate thoughts there is no better way than recourse to
books. And though they perceive I on occasion forsake them, they never
mutiny or murmur, but welcome me always with the self-same visage.

I never travel, whether in peace or in war, without books. It is
wonderful what repose I find in the knowledge that they are at my elbow
to delight me when time shall serve. In this human peregrination this is
the best munition I have found.

At home I betake me somewhat oftener to my library. It is in the chief
approach to my house, so that under my eyes are my garden, my
base-court, my yard, and even the best rooms of my house. There, without
order or method, I can turn over and ransack now one book and now
another. Sometimes I muse, sometimes save; and walking up and down I
indite and register these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed in
a third storey of a tower. The lowermost is my chapel, the second a
chamber, where I often lie when I would be alone. Above is a
clothes-room. In this library, formerly the least useful room in all my
house, I pass the greatest part of my life's days, and most hours of the
day--I am never there of nights. Next it is a handsome, neat study,
large enough to have a fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowed.

If I feared not trouble more than cost I might easily join a convenient
gallery of a hundred paces long and twelve broad on each side of this
room, and upon the same floor, the walls being already of a convenient
height. Each retired place requireth a walk. If I sit long my thoughts
are prone to sleep. My mind goes not alone as if legs moved it. Those
who study without books are all in the same case.

My library is circular in shape, with no flat side save that in which
stand my table and chair. Thus around me at one look it offers the full
sight of all my books, set round about upon shelves, five ranks, one
above another. It has three bay windows, of a far-extending, rich, and
unobstructed prospect. The room is sixteen paces across.

In winter I am less constantly there, for my house being on a hill, no
part is more subject to all weathers than this. But this pleases me only
the more, both for the benefit of the exercise--which is a matter to be
taken into account--and because, being remote and o